Analog SFF, November 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  She walked across the room, and he found his eyes tracking the movement of her rear end through her shorts. Sitting on top of one of the filing cabinets was a stack almost a foot high of papers stuffed into several manila file folders.

  Don was worried that his new looks didn't quite stand up to scrutiny; his own appearance these days was so startling to himself that part of him assumed it should be startling to others, too. But as she handed the great pile of paper to him, she gave no sign if she found anything out of the ordinary about him.

  For his part, he found himself noticing the gentle hint of fruit fragrance—how wonderful to have his sense of smell back! It wasn't perfume. More likely, he thought, it was her shampoo or conditioner, and it was quite pleasant.

  "My goodness,” he said. “I didn't expect there to be so much!"

  "Do you need a hand getting it all down to your car?” asked Lenore.

  "Actually, I took the subway."

  "Oh! I can get you a box to put it in."

  "Thanks, but...” She lifted her orange eyebrows, and he went on. “It's just I was going to go the Art Gallery this afternoon. They've got a special exhibition on of Robyn Herrington blown glass that I want to see."

  "Heck, the Art Galley is only a couple of blocks south of here. Why don't you leave the papers here, and pick them up when you're done?"

  "I don't want to be a bother."

  "Oh, it's no bother at all! I'll be here straight through until five o'clock."

  "Workaholic, eh? You must really like it here."

  She leaned her shapely rump against a nearby desk. “Oh, yes. It's terrific."

  "You're doing a Ph.D.?"

  "Not yet. I'm just finishing my Master's."

  "Is this where you did your undergrad?"

  "Nah. I went to Simon Fraser."

  He nodded. “And is that where home is? Vancouver?"

  "Yup. And, no offense, it sure beats this place. I miss the ocean, I miss the mountains, and I can't stand the climate here."

  "But don't you get tired of all the rain in Vancouver?"

  "I don't even notice it; it's what I'm used to. But the snow here in winter! And the humidity now. I'd die if it weren't for air-conditioning."

  Don wasn't much of a fan of Toronto's climate either. He nodded again. “So, are you going to move back after you finish here?"

  "Nah, probably not. I want to go somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Not nearly enough SETI searching has been done of the southern skies."

  "Anywhere in particular?” asked Don.

  "The University of Canterbury has a great astronomy department."

  "Where's that?"

  "New Zealand. Christchurch."

  "Ah,” said Don. “Mountains and the ocean."

  She smiled. “Exactly."

  "Have you ever been there?"

  "No, no. But someday..."

  "It's great."

  "You've been?” she asked, letting her eyebrows climb her freckled brow.

  "Yup,” he said, adopting her style of speech. “Back in—” He stopped himself before he said, “Back in 1992.” “Ah, a few years ago."

  "Ooow,” said Lenore, her lips puckering appealingly as she made the sound. “What was it like? Did you just love it?"

  He thought he should break eye contact with the young woman again, and his gaze landed on a digital wall clock; it was 1:10. He was getting hungry. That was another thing that had come back along with his sense of smell, now that his body had renewed itself. For so long, he'd been eating tiny meals, always having leftovers to take home from restaurants, and during the rollback, while his body had been rebuilding lost muscle mass, he'd eaten like the proverbial pig. Now, though, his appetite had settled into being what it'd been when he really had been twenty-five, which was still pretty prodigious.

  "Anyway,” said Don, “thanks for letting me come back later to get the papers. I should be heading off."

  "To the Art Gallery?"

  "Actually, I thought I'd grab a bite first. Is there anywhere good around here?"

  "There's the Duke of York,” she said. “It's good. In fact..."

  "Yes?"

  "Well, I really am seriously thinking about applying to New Zealand. I'd love to pick your brain a bit. Mind if I join you for lunch?"

  * * * *

  Chapter 21

  Don and Lenore headed outside. The sun was high in the quicksilver sky, the humidity stifling. To the south, the CN Tower shimmered through the haze. The campus had been mostly empty, this being summer, but Bloor Street was packed with what was probably an equal mix of downtown businesspeople and tourists, plus a few robots, all madly hurrying somewhere. Don and Lenore chatted about New Zealand as they walked along.

  "It's a great place,” he said, “but I'll warn you, they've got this annoying tendency to put a slice of beet on hamburgers, and—oh, look!” There was a car parked at the curb. He pointed at its white and blue license plate: PQHO-294, with the hyphen, as was normal in Ontario, a stylized crown. “Qoph."

  Lenore's eyebrows leapt up her forehead. “The name of a Hebrew letter!” she exclaimed with relish. “Do you play Scrabble?” Every serious Scrabble player had memorized the handful of acceptable words that had a Q but no U in them.

  He smiled. “Oh, yes."

  "Me, too,” said Lenore. “I'm always practicing with license plates. A few weeks ago, I saw two cars side by side, and their plates were anagrams of ‘barf’ and ‘crap.’ I was smiling for days after that."

  They continued on, talking some more about New Zealand, and by the time they arrived at the restaurant, they'd exhausted just about everything Don had to say on the topic. The Duke of York turned out to be a two-story-tall pub-style restaurant on a quiet street north of Bloor. The other buildings on the street, all classy renovated houses, seemed to contain the offices of high-priced lawyers and accountants. They were shown to a booth near the back on the pub's first floor, and settled in. Rock music—or whatever kids today called the stuff they listened to—was playing over the speakers. Mercifully, the place was air-conditioned.

  There was a table near theirs, with three men seated at it. A server about Lenore's age, and almost as pretty, wearing a skin-tight black top scooped low to show a lot of cleavage, was taking that group's order for a bottle of wine to go with their meals.

  "Red or white?” asked one of the men, looking at his friends.

  "Red,” replied the fellow on his left, and “red,” repeated the guy on his right.

  The first man tipped his head up to look at the server, and said, “I'm hearing red."

  Lenore leaned over the table and whispered to Don, while indicating the guy who'd just spoken with a tilting of her head. “Wow,” she said. “He must have synesthesia."

  Don barked a delighted laugh.

  The same server turned her attention to them. She was tall, and broad shouldered, with chocolate brown skin and waist-length blue-black hair. “Can I get you—oh, Lennie! I didn't realize it was you, honey!"

  Lenore smiled sheepishly at Don. “I wait tables here two nights a week."

  He suddenly had a nice mental picture of Lenore dressed like the server, whose name tag read “Gabby.” Gabby put a hand on her rounded hip, appraising him. “So, who's this?” she said, with mock seriousness, as if Lenore's companion had to pass muster with her.

  "This is my friend Don,” said Lenore.

  "Hello,” he said. “Nice to meet you."

  "You, too,” Gabby said. She turned her attention back to Lenore. “See you at the bank on Saturday?"

  "For sure."

  Gabby took their drink orders. Lenore asked for a glass of white wine; Don ordered his old standby of Diet Coke. He was glad that the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo had finally merged; he used to hate that little game of “Is Pepsi okay?” in places that had served only that brand.

  "So,” he said, after Gabby left, “you're helping her rob a bank?"

  Lenore looked a little embarrassed. “Food bank, actu
ally. Gabby helps out there all the time. Me, I'm there most Saturdays.” She paused, then, a bit awkwardly, as if she felt a need to offer some further justification: “Working in a restaurant, you see so much food go to waste, and yet people still go hungry."

  He looked away, wondering how many—good Christ, how many millions of people could have been fed with the money that had been spent rejuvenating him.

  Lenore was, as his answering machine had opined, a chatty sort, and he was mostly content to just listen to her ramble on; indeed, it was safer than him doing much talking. She had such an animated face, such a lively voice, that he could have listened to her for hours. Still, he made occasional efforts to keep up his end of the conversation. “So, you like Onderdonk,” he said, indicating her T-shirt.

  "Oh, they're warp,” she replied. He had no idea whether that was good or bad, and kept a poker face. “What about you?” continued Lenore. “What groups do you like?"

  Oh, shit, thought Don. He'd set himself up for this. The bands of his youth—ELO, Wings, Supertramp, April Wine—would mean nothing to her, and, for the life of him, he couldn't think of the name of any contemporary group. “I, um, ah...” And then, in a flash of brilliance, he pointed at the wall speaker, indicating the group that was playing now—not that he could name it, or the song.

  But she nodded, impressed. “Hyperflower,” she said. “Skytop.” Don tried not to frown. One of those words was probably the name of the group; the other, a favorable reaction to his choice. If it had been her pointing at the speaker and oh, say, “Call Me"—a standard from his own university years—had been playing, he'd have identified the musician first, then added his assessment: “Blondie. Cool.” So he assumed “Hyperflower” was the name of the band, and “skytop,” a term of praise. Just like decoding an alien language, he thought. Sarah would be proud.

  "Anybody else?” asked Lenore.

  "Umm...” After a moment, in desperation, he said, “The Beatles."

  "No way!” she squealed. “I love them! What's your favorite song of theirs?"

  "'Yesterday.’”

  She murmured appreciatively.

  "It's unusual,” he said, “liking the Beatles these days.” Although once he said it, he was afraid he might be wrong. For all he knew, the Fab Four could be enjoying a general resurgence of interest right now. When he'd been in university, there'd been a huge Bogart revival on campuses, and Bogey's great films had been almost a half-century in the past, even then.

  But she nodded enthusiastically. “For sure. Hardly anybody I know has even heard of them."

  "How'd you get into them?"

  She looked at him quizzically, and he thought that maybe he'd used a dated turn of phrase. But she must have sussed out its meaning because she said, “My grandfather had a collection of them."

  Ouch.

  She went on. “He used to play them for me whenever I came over as a kid. He had an antique stereo—that was his hobby—and a whole bunch of them on nylon."

  It took him a moment to get it; she meant vinyl. But it wasn't polite to correct people when they made innocent mistakes—his grandfather had taught him that.

  Still, thought Don, there had to be something they could discuss that wouldn't put him at such a disadvantage. Of course, they could have talked about the one person they both knew: Sarah. Isn't that what most strangers do? But he couldn't stand to hear another reference to his “grandmother."

  Gabby returned with their drinks and took their food order. Don asked for something called “the blue steak salad"—sliced steak on garden greens with crumbled blue cheese. Lenore, who hadn't had to even glance at the menu—working here, she presumably knew it by heart—ordered fish and chips.

  Don loved debating politics, but usually avoided it with people he'd just met. But there was a provincial election looming here, and, since Lenore was from British Columbia, she likely didn't have strong feelings about what was happening in Ontario; it was probably a safe topic. “So, who'd you like to see win on Friday?” Don asked.

  "I always vote NDP,” she said.

  That made him smile. He remembered his own socialist days as a student. Still, as they continued to talk, he was impressed with how much Lenore knew about the current scene. But when history came up—

  "Favorite prime minister? I guess I'd have to say Mulroney."

  Don really got pissed off by the revisionist history that was popular these days. “Listen,” he said, “I remember when Brian Mulroney was prime minister, and he—” He cut himself off when he saw her wide-eyed expression. “I mean,” he quickly corrected, “I remember reading about when Brian Mulroney was prime minister, and he was even worse than Chrétien when it came to being sleazy..."

  Still, why was he leaving his true age a secret? It wasn't as if he could keep it under wraps forever. People would eventually find out—including people at the astronomy department; Sarah was still in touch with several of them, and they had no pact to keep what had happened quiet. Besides, Lenore would probably be fascinated to hear all about his meeting with Cody McGavin, who, after all, was the patron saint of SETI these days. But whenever he contemplated the selective success of the treatment, the guilt cut him from within, like swallowed glass, and—

  "Okay,” said Lenore, “let's see what you're made of."

  He stared at her, completely baffled, as she rummaged in her purse. After a moment, she pulled out her datacom and placed it on the table between them. She pressed a couple of keys, and it projected a holographic Scrabble board onto the wooden tabletop.

  "Wow!” Don said. Although he had a nice collection of portable Scrabble boards—fold-up sets, magnetic sets, a set with self-stick vinyl tiles, dedicated electronic devices, even a miniature version that fit on a key chain—he'd never seen one this ... this skytop.

  "All right, Mr. Qoph,” Lenore said. “Let's play."

  * * * *

  Chapter 22

  A spring evening in 2009. “Sweetheart, I'm home!” Sarah called out.

  Don came out of the kitchen, crossed through the living room, and stood at the head of the six stairs leading down to the entryway. “How'd it go?"

  It was The First International Collaborative Session for Dealing with the Message from Sigma Draconis, a three-day marathon, hosted by the University of Toronto, chaired by Sarah herself, with SETI experts from all over the world having flown in to attend.

  "Exhausting,” said Sarah, sliding aside the mirrored closet door and hanging up her raincoat; April was Toronto's wettest month. “Contentious. But ultimately worthwhile."

  "I'm glad,” he said. “I've got a pot roast in the oven, by the way. It should be ready in about twenty minutes."

  The door to the house opened again and Carl came in, looking soaked and bedraggled. “Hey, Mom,” he said. “How was the conference?"

  "Good. I was just telling your father."

  "Dinner in twenty minutes, Carl,” Don said.

  "Great. I'll wash up.” Carl managed to get his wet shoes off without bending over or undoing the laces. He didn't take off his wet jacket, but just scooted up the stairs, slipping by Don as he did so.

  "So, what happened?” Don asked.

  Sarah came up to the living room, and they shared a kiss. “We started with an inventory of the unauthorized messages that we know have already been sent to Sigma Draconis."

  "Like what?"

  "There's a group that says it managed to render the opening of Genesis in the language the Dracons provided."

  "Christ,” said Don.

  "No,” she said. “He doesn't show up until the sequel. Anyway, another group has sent up a library of digitized Islamic art. Somebody else says he's sent a list of the serial numbers of all of the US soldiers killed in Iraq. Another person sent a version of the Mensa admissions test. He said instead of us worrying about passing the aliens’ test, they should be worrying about passing one of ours; maybe they're not good enough to join our club."

  "Huh,” said Don.

 
"And there's been lots of music sent.” Sarah moved over to the couch and lay down. He motioned for her to lift her legs so he could sit down at the far end. She did so, then she lowered her feet into his lap, and he began rubbing them for her.

  "Mmmmm,” she said. “That's nice. Anyway, Fraser Gunn was there—remember him? He argued that sending music was a mistake."

  "Why?” asked Don. “Afraid of being sued by the copyright holders?"

  "No, no. But, as he said, the only thing we've got to trade with aliens is our culture; that's the only thing you might want from another civilization. And if we give away the best stuff—Bach, Beethoven, the Beatles—we'll have nothing good to offer when the aliens say, hey, what have you got to swap for our best work?"

  Don knew all about scraping the bottom of the cultural barrel. He was a DVD addict—more so as a collector than as an actual watcher. He'd been thrilled when all the great television of his childhood and teenage years had been released on DVD, and he'd snapped up the boxed sets: Thunderbirds, All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Roots, Kolchak: The Night Stalker and, of course, the original Star Trek. But the last time he'd been in Future Shop, all he'd seen in the new-releases section was forgotten crap like Sugar Time!, a seventies sitcom starring Barbi Benton, and The Ropers, a spinoff from Three's Company whose only virtue was that it proved the original wasn't the worst TV show ever made. The studios had gone through their good stuff at a breakneck pace, and were now desperately trying to find anything at all worth releasing.

  "Well,” he said, “maybe Fraser's right. I mean, the only thing SETI is good for is sending information of one sort or another, no?"

  "Oh, I'm sure he is right,” said Sarah. “But there's nothing we can do about it. People are going to send whatever they want to. It's turned Carl Sagan's old saying on its ear. He used to ask, ‘Who speaks for the Earth?’ The question really is, ‘Who doesn't speak for the Earth?’”

  "That's our number one product these days, isn't it?” said Don. “Spam."