Asimov's SF, July 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Darla stood over the crib, staring down at her tiny, delicate brother, and couldn't bring herself to hate him. She had seen baby pictures of herself, just after delivery. Compared to Eric, she had been monstrously huge, already able to grab at things and turn herself over. This tiny bright-eyed creature was so . . . helpless.

  And he almost hadn't come home that Thursday; Darla's mother had been invited to speak at a conference right after his scheduled delivery, and had suggested extending their contract so the baby would come out after the conference was over—when he was at ten months gestation. Darla's father had been adamantly opposed to the idea of leaving his son unborn for an extra month; though they tried not to argue around Darla, it wasn't difficult for the daughter who had been left unborn for an extra three months to draw the obvious conclusion.

  In the end, it didn't matter. The contract was for nine months, and the company wouldn't extend it. It was autumn, a busy season for artificial wombs—people liked having their babies born in late spring—and they needed the womb-space for other clients.

  Darla touched her baby brother's tiny soft hand and hoped, guiltily but fervently, that he would stay up all night and be miserable with colic and make them sorry. Darla had slept through the very first night after she was born. She had heard her mother tell the story, over and over.

  Until the first reports about Twelver Syndrome came out, and her mother had never told the story again.

  * * * *

  Darla was on her way to track practice when they jumped her. One minute she was walking down the hall, rolling her shoulders and swinging her arms; then all at once she was up against the wall, held there by a slim hand with long purple fingernails.

  Her attacker was Valenzia, Carl's new girlfriend. Carl was nowhere in sight—fights in Darla's school were strictly boy vs. boy or girl vs. girl—but he might as well have been. Valenzia had never had anything against Darla before.

  Behind Valenzia were three—no, four—of her friends. All tough girls, or girls who wanted to be tough. All had been involved in fistfights before. All had won those fistfights.

  “I was curious,” Valenzia said. “Do Twelvers know how to fight?”

  Darla made no move to try and free herself. There was obviously no way to avoid getting beaten up; she was already trying to think of how to make the beating as short as possible. But most importantly, she was going to have to say nothing incriminating while they were doing it.

  “I'm not a Twelver,” she said.

  Valenzia's lip curled, and too late, Darla realized her mistake. She shouldn't have said it. She should have screamed, or whimpered, or sobbed.

  “Creep,” one of the girls behind Valenzia said.

  “Robot.”

  “Ice-brain.”

  “Twelver.”

  Valenzia's fist slammed into the side of Darla's face. Darla's head exploded with pain, and she did her best to think through it. What would a normal person do? Hit back, even though it was futile? Beg to be let alone, even though that was guaranteed to make it worse?

  “I was reading about Twelvers last night,” Valenzia said. “Their brains get numb during those extra three months floating around in amniotic fluid.” Somehow, she managed to make it sound dirty—Valenzia excelled at making anything sound dirty—and the other girls all laughed.

  The worst of it was that Valenzia almost had it right. Darla had read that same article just a week ago. It was pop-science, explaining things in simplistic terms: How the first three months of life were crucial for the development of infants’ stress regulation mechanisms. How high stress during early infanthood produced fearful, anxious children whose stress responses escalated rapidly. How when infants underwent no stress during those three months, the opposite happened—producing children who didn't have stress reactions at all. Who, in the face of stress, were unnaturally, weirdly, creepily calm.

  Twelvers.

  No surprise that even Valenzia had understood the gist of it. It was the fact that she had been reading the article at all that worried Darla.

  Valenzia punched her with the other hand; this time, one of her rings cut into the side of Darla's cheek, and Darla dropped to the ground. Her best option, she decided as a trickle of blood burned down her face, was to pretend they were hurting her worse than they were. She doubled over and groaned.

  “What are you doing?”

  Valenzia whirled. Darla looked up. Leora stood at the end of the hall, dark eyes wide. Astonishingly, she was alone. She advanced on Valenzia, her heels hitting the floor hard. “Leave her alone!”

  Valenzia was almost a foot taller than Leora. She stood her ground. “Why? Are you two best friends again?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Oh, sure, it makes sense that you'd get along with a Twelver. Someone with ice in her blood. Same reason you couldn't hold onto Carl.”

  Leora stopped several yards from Valenzia and raised her eyebrows. “Is that how he tells it?”

  Darla, from the floor, could see clearly how Valenzia's fingers curled into a fist, how her arm muscles clenched in preparation for the blow. But hitting her boyfriend's ex would be a pretty pathetic move. It would be as much as admitting that Valenzia was afraid of Leora.

  Instead, Valenzia spat on the floor. “Hang around with Twelvers,” she snarled, “and people will start treating you the same soon enough.” But she was turning to go even as she said it.

  Darla remained on her knees until Valenzia and her friends turned the corner, then got to her feet. Leora made no move to help her up, a sensitivity Darla appreciated. She ran her tongue over her teeth and tasted blood.

  Leora nodded and turned to go, and Darla felt as if she had been punched again. She spoke in pure disbelief. “That's it?"

  Leora swung back. “You shouldn't be walking alone in these halls, Darla. You know what people say about you.”

  What people say about you. Darla finally voiced the suspicion she had been holding at bay for months. “And where did they hear it?”

  Leora gave her a hurt look, which was so unjust that for a moment Darla couldn't speak. “Do you think I'd do that to you?”

  “I don't know what to think anymore. You're one of them now. You probably hate Twelvers too.”

  “Oh, don't be stupid.” Leora leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Then why?” Darla had to push the word through her thickening throat. “If it's not because I'm a Twelver, then why don't you want to be my friend anymore?” She heard, a moment too late, how pathetic that sounded.

  Leora pushed herself away from the wall. “Grow up, Darla. Things change, that's all.”

  “I didn't change!”

  “Maybe that's exactly the problem.” Leora made an irritated motion with her hand. “I don't want to talk about it.”

  “Why? Am I making you feel guilty?”

  “No! I would never bother feeling guilty about you. I would never bother feeling anything about you!”

  “Then why are you yelling?” Darla asked.

  Leora glared at her, then spun on her heel and strode away down the hall.

  * * * *

  Darla told her parents she had accidentally bruised her cheek in gym class, and they believed her. They made a fuss about it anyhow, because all their parenting books warned them about the dangers of neglecting an older child. Darla found the extra attention annoying.

  And the truth was, Eric didn't take up a lot of her parents’ time. He was a perfect baby, content to lie on his play mat and stare at dangling toys for hours at a time. He stopped waking up at night when he was one month old, which made Darla feel irrationally that she had lost some sort of race; at one month, she hadn't even been in the running. He smiled at five weeks and laughed at two months. Her parents certainly had no reason for regrets.

  Not about him.

  The examination of Darla's cheek was brought to an end by Eric's screams. A few days ago, he had learned how to crawl by wriggling himself b
ackward across the living room carpet. As usual, this ended with him backing himself under the couch, realizing that he was stuck, and bursting into panic-stricken wails.

  “You never used to do that,” Darla's mother said, as she hurried across the room to scoop him up. “You would just look around, figure out what you'd done, and try to turn around until you were clear. You would only cry if you couldn't manage it on your own.”

  She said it proudly; but Darla's father pressed his lips together, and Darla felt her eyes sting. She touched one finger to the throbbing bump on her cheek and looked away.

  The next day, when Darla was walking to her seat in history class, someone tripped her. She sprawled face-first on the floor between the rows of desks, her backpack hitting the back of her neck with a thud that went all the way down her spine. Pens and books and papers spilled everywhere. She lay for a moment on the dirty tiled floor, gauging the situation; she could sense the unified malice around her, and knew that as soon as she tried to get up, someone would push her down. On the other hand, she couldn't just stay on the floor until a teacher showed up. She tried to think of another option.

  “Doesn't seem too bothered, does she?” Carl snickered, and she felt as if she had been given a blow to the stomach more painful than the bruise on her neck. She stood up abruptly, too fast for anyone to push her, but not before another voice whispered, “Twelver. No point trying to hide it—we know.”

  She should have looked for who it was, should have been watching for the next shove. Instead her eyes sought out Leora, who was perched on her desk on the other side of the classroom. One look at Leora's cold, defensive expression was enough to tell Darla what had happened.

  For a moment she felt as if she couldn't breathe; it was as if she had turned to ice. Then, all at once, everything was hot. This wasn't a threat, it was a betrayal, and she reacted the way any normal kid would.

  Darla Tappin lost her temper.

  It didn't make her suddenly powerful, or impressive, or even normal. What it made her—a phenomenon she had observed in others many times—was stupid. She turned to face Leora and snapped, “I promised I wouldn't tell anyone about you.”

  There was a moment of frozen silence. Darla's voice carried so much conviction that several people turned to stare at Leora with horrified shock, but Darla didn't have time to feel gratified before her brain caught up with her. Leora could disprove it in a second. Call up a copy of her birth records on her z-pad and show everyone that Darla was a liar.

  But Leora did no such thing. She stood there, looking back at Darla, face blank with shock and betrayal.

  But Darla hadn't betrayed her. Unless. . . .

  It made no sense. Leora erupted into rage or tears at least twice a week. She acted nothing like a Twelver. Unless she was better at faking it than Darla was. Or unless . . .

  Unless Leora had a reason for being so sure there was nothing really different about Twelvers.

  “Unbelievable—we've got two of them,” someone said, and someone else laughed. Then Ms. Hastim entered the classroom, and everyone took their seats. Ms. Hastim turned to pull up the z-board, pressing one hand to the small of her back, and Leora shot Darla a look so vicious it should have seared the skin right off her face.

  Darla looked back at her and, slowly and deliberately, smiled.

  Everyone in class took notice. A sub-audible murmur rose up around them.

  “Quiet,” Ms. Hastim snapped. Then she stopped, winced, and put her hand on her distended abdomen.

  The entire class gasped collectively. Ms. Hastim took a deep breath, then straightened and continued with her lesson—a boring study of the circulatory system that she had started, rather sullenly, once parents began complaining about her propagandizing to their children.

  Darla watched intensely, but nothing else happened. When class ended with Ms. Hastim's baby still firmly stuck inside her, she felt a mixture of relief and disappointment.

  But the next morning, there was a substitute teacher in Ms. Hastim's place. The students glanced at each other uneasily as he began calling up microscope images on the z-board, but no one wanted to ask. There was a good chance that whoever asked would be teased about it for days.

  When the substitute turned to face the class, Darla decided that stupid jokes about natural childbirth would be a nice change from stupid jokes about Twelvers. She raised her hand. “Is Ms. Hastim sick?”

  “Ms. Hastim gave birth,” the substitute said.

  Scandalized giggles rippled through the class. Darla frowned, counting in her mind. “She said she wouldn't go on maternity leave until next semester.”

  “The baby came early.” The substitute wasn't even trying to hide his disgust, though Darla suspected there would be no parental complaints this time. “That's the kind of thing that can happen when babies are gestated naturally. There was no warning, either, which will make it very difficult for me to get the rest of your lessons in order.”

  That caused some grins, and a flurry of whispers began as soon as the substitute turned his back. Darla didn't participate—not that anyone would have invited or welcomed her participation. She sat perfectly still, staring at the images on the z-board without seeing them, seeing instead the simple explanation that made sense of everything. With a careful controlled movement, she turned her head and looked at Leora.

  Leora's face was slightly pink, and she sat every bit as still as Darla did. Darla kept looking at her, until the force of her gaze pulled Leora's head reluctantly around. Leora drew in her breath, chin trembling. And Darla smiled.

  * * * *

  Darla waited two days—long enough to let Leora begin thinking that maybe she had imagined that silent exchange, that maybe Darla didn't really know anything. She waited until she found Leora sitting alone at a table in the cafeteria. Darla slid onto the bench; and, when Leora raised her head in outrage, said quietly, “Are you a Sevener or an Eighter?”

  Leora's fork clattered onto the table. Darla picked up the fork, handed it back to Leora, and said, “I knew you weren't a Twelver. But I only now figured out why you wouldn't show your records to prove it.”

  Leora took the fork and stared at it as if she didn't know what to do with it.

  “Bad enough that it would show you gestated inside your mother,” Darla went on conversationally. “I mean, that's just gross. But you came out too early, too. What did they used to say about babies like that?”

  “Nothing,” Leora whispered, still looking at the fork. “They didn't say anything. They didn't even have words like Sevener and Eighter. They didn't care.”

  “How nice that must have been,” Darla said.

  Leora dug her fork into her mashed potatoes, then left it there and looked at Darla. “Why are you happy?”

  Darla realized that she was smiling. She curled in her upper lip, trying to stop; but when she opened her mouth to speak, the smile broke free. She couldn't help it. She leaned forward. “Because it's so obvious that you're not—that there's nothing wrong with you. And since we're the same—”

  “We are not the same,” Leora snarled, and Darla felt her smile go flat. She sat back, blinking.

  “But you just—”

  “It's weird and it's gross,” Leora said. “But it's not the same as being a Twelver. You really are different. You can't even pretend to be the same as everyone else, no matter how hard you try. You should just stop trying.”

  The silence between them was long and hot. Ridiculously, Leora was the one blinking back tears; Darla sat dry-eyed and dry-mouthed, the pain inside her all rolled up. “All right,” she said.

  Leora let go of the fork. “What?”

  “All right. I'll stop trying.”

  Leora watched her with large dark eyes, trapped and panicked; like Eric's when he backed himself under the couch.

  “I don't care whether or not you're my friend.” The lie was easy; Darla knew Leora would believe it. “But what you're going to do from now on—if you don't want everyone to know wh
at you are—is act like my friend. Sit with me at lunch. Talk to me after class. Don't ever look at me as if I don't deserve to exist.”

  Leora lowered her mascara-laden eyes. Darla got to her feet.

  “I'll give you time to get used to the idea.” She felt something thick and sad rise in her throat, and spoke around it. “We'll start tomorrow.”

  She watched Leora's eyes narrow in helpless fury. Watched the word Twelver form on her parted lips.

  Watched her swallow the word and leave it unsaid.

  “See you then,” Darla said. She walked away, through the sea of faces and out into the hall. She didn't bother turning to see whether Leora was watching her go.

  Copyright © 2011 Leah Cypess

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  * * *

  Poetry: PAGE TWENTYFOURHUNDREDANDSEVENTYTHREE

  by W. Gregory Stewart

  * * * *

  * * * *

  My prediction is that,

  if you sit a million monkeys

  at a million typewriters

  for a million years,

  you'll just end up

  with a lot of monkey junk

  all over your rebuilt Smith-Coronas—that,

  and a big banana bill.

  And they won't

  change the ribbons

  as often as they should—if,

  of course, at all.

  So—no Shakespeare, no Hemingway—

  not even Judy Blume.

  Now, I don't have the math

  or the millions—

  OR the time—to prove this,

  but I'm going on record

  here and now anyway:

  no Shakespeare.

  And esp. not—if punctuation counts.

  —

  So, you know—let me know how that works out.

  —

  —W. Gregory Stewart

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  * * *