Asimov's SF, October-November 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Sara's fur coat was in its place at the back of the kitchen door. He felt it with his hand, and buried his face in it briefly. It was slightly damp and smelled of the beach.

  He stood outside the door of her room, listening. There was nothing. If she was there, she was surely on her own. Unless they were sleeping. Christopher knocked. He'd never done that before. He'd never seen inside her room.

  The door opened.

  “Oh,” she said. She looked ... puzzled. “I thought you were at work. Is everything okay?”

  He held out the tape cassettes. “I brought you these. You said yesterday you wanted to hear them properly. Can you play them all right? I mean ... I don't know if you've got a tape player?”

  “I'm fine. Thanks. I'll listen to them.”

  She was going to close the door.

  “Sara?” he said. “Um. Yesterday...”

  “Christopher, I'm really, really sorry. I was so rude. I'm really ... to just go off like that ... I should have...”

  “No,” he said. “It's okay. Please.”

  “I didn't think...” she said. Her whiteless brown eyes seemed to be searching for something in his face. It was an odd, alien look that he couldn't interpret. The skin of her face looked cool and pale. It shone faintly in the half-light on the landing as if it was slightly damp.

  “It doesn't matter,” he said. “Really. Listen, I was just thinking, seeing as we live out here together, it might be nice if ... well, we could go out. One evening. Maybe. For a drink or something?”

  “Chris, you know I'm ... seeing someone. Don't you?”

  He felt his face coloring. “Well, I thought ... anyway, let me know what you think of the tape.” He turned to go.

  “Wait,” she said. “Look ... I wasn't going to...” She was struggling with something. He couldn't tell what it was, but she seemed to make up her mind. She held open the door to her room. “Come in a moment.”

  The curtains were drawn and her room was cool in the afternoon half-light filtered through thin, pale-green fabric. There was almost no furniture. Sara sat on the floor, and he did the same, trying to stop himself peering about, but only ending up feeling furtive. As his eyes adapted to the dim light he saw heaps of the beach stuff she had collected. It was piled up on the windowsill and scattered across the uncarpeted floorboards. The faint smell of the sea was on the air again. It tinged his awareness of Sara herself: her cool, thin body under her black clothes, and behind her shoulder the distracting, shadowy bulk of her bed.

  “There's something I should have said yesterday,” she said. “But I didn't. I wasn't sure I could. Actually, I'm still not sure I can...”

  Christopher was struggling to keep his attention focused. “You can say what you want to me,” he said.

  “It's about the tapes.”

  “Oh.”

  “You mustn't listen to them. They're dangerous. I mean, what you can hear on them is dangerous, and you mustn't listen to it again, not ever.”

  “What?”

  He couldn't see much of her face, only a soft silhouette. What was she trying to say?

  “Destroy the tapes. Don't listen again.”

  No, she couldn't mean that. The long song of the sea was wonderful. It was essential.

  “You know what that sound is,” he said. “Don't you? You have to tell me, Sara.”

  “I can't. But I know you have to stop listening.”

  “But ... it's beautiful, and I found it. I taped it. It's my discovery, I can't just chuck it away. It's more important than that. What do you know?”

  “Listening to it gives you dreams, doesn't it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to listen to it, more than you want to do anything else in the world?”

  He was watching the pale glimmer of her skin in the shadows, the darkness of her hair, the darkness of her mouth, the purple of her fingernails. “Not more than anything...” he said, “but, basically, yes.”

  Sara took a breath.

  “There's no name for them,” she said. “Not any more. Most people can't hear them. If you can, it's a gift, but dangerous, like an addiction. Hearing their song soaks away your energies. All you want to do is listen more and more. It gets into your blood, it takes you over, it calls you: and in the end it pulls you down, deep into the water, and you drown. That's why when you hear it you have to turn away fast, and come out of the sea.”

  “So we both have this gift?” he said. “But I've only heard it on the hydrophones: maybe that's not the same.”

  “You mustn't listen, Christopher. You mustn't go looking for them.”

  “What I'm hearing is way out in the Atlantic. Are you saying they come inshore too? Here?”

  “Maybe. I think so. They're everywhere.”

  “What are they? Some kind of whale or something?”

  She shook her head and looked away toward the curtained window, as if she were looking toward the sea. She sat that way in silence for a moment.

  “I'm not supposed to say,” she said, carefully, in a low, quiet voice.

  “Sara...?”

  She held out her hands toward him in the dim greenish light, palms upward and fingers spread wide. He saw that her fingers—but not her thumb—were joined below the first joint by thin and delicately translucent folds of skin.

  His heart was tight in his chest. It was hard to breathe. He wanted to put his arms around her narrow shoulders. He wanted those pale slender hands to touch his skin. Her whiteless brown eyes glistened.

  “You'd better go,” she said.

  He looked around her sparse room heaped with things from the sea. “What's happening to you?” he said.

  “I'm diving deep. You can't get involved.”

  “That guy who comes here in the night. He's part of it, isn't he? Who is he?”

  She flinched. Closing herself against him.

  “I'm sorry,” he said.

  “Leave me alone. I know what I'm doing and it's nothing to do with you. He was right. I shouldn't have talked to you. Please go now.”

  That night, Christopher heard him come to her again. Their voices were raised, arguing, but he couldn't make out words. Later, he heard Sara cry out. It might have been pain, but it wasn't.

  * * * *

  He woke before dawn from dreams of the sea. Someone was moving around in Sara's room. He heard scuffing, the scraping of wood on wood, her heaps of shoreline stuff being shoved aside. Through the wall came a man's grunt and a muffled curse, as if he had stumbled in the dark. Then her bedroom door opened and heavy footsteps went down the stairs.

  Christopher pulled on his trousers and searched around for his socks, but couldn't find them. He pulled his shoes on anyway and went downstairs. If he could surprise the man before he left, if he found them both together in the kitchen, he would ... what? There was no time to think.

  In the kitchen it was Stone. He was standing by the kitchen table, holding the tape cassettes in the air like a trophy.

  “Stone, what the hell are you doing here? Get out of my kitchen. Get out of my house.”

  “Why don't you just sit down, Lieutenant. Collect your thoughts.” Stone started opening cupboards at random. “Where the hell do you keep your coffee? I need a cup. This is too early for me.”

  “Just get out,” said Christopher. “How did you get in here anyway? Where's Sara?” He looked over Stone's shoulder. The kitchen door was unbolted and standing open, Sara's fur coat gone from its place. If she had heard Stone coming and run ... ? She needed time. He would give it to her if he could. He sat down heavily at the table. “There's tea,” he said. “Over there.”

  “Thanks,” said Stone. He began to busy himself with filling the kettle. “Mugs?”

  “What are you doing in my house, Stone?”

  “You're in deep shit, Osgerby. You could disappear for a long time because of these.” He brandished the cassettes again.

  Christopher sat in silence. What was there to say? Nothing. He had no energy left,
not even anger. He let time drift on while Stone made tea.

  Stone set a mug in front of each of them and sat down facing him across the table. They looked at each other in silence. Suddenly Stone stood up again. “Where's your bin?” he said.

  “What? There, but...”

  Stone went over, stepped on the lever to open the pedal bin, dropped the tapes in, let the lid fall shut with a small thud, and sat back down in his chair.

  “There,” he said. “Over. Forgotten. Never happened.” Christopher stared at him. “You've got a talent, Lieutenant. Pity to waste it.”

  “What are you talking about? Who are you, anyway?”

  “Never mind that. I'm authorized to make you an offer.”

  “You're Security, aren't you? SIS? Box? You never did know your arse from your elbow reading the feed.”

  “And you like to listen, don't you, Chris? Just ... listen? That's what you do best, isn't it? And you hear things no one else can hear. We've looked at the scrolls from the last few days over and over again, but we just can't find what you picked up on those tapes. It's in there somewhere, bound to be, but we can't pick it out of the background noise. Maybe we never will, not without a human ear to sniff it first. Like you can. There's a couple of others can do it too. The CIA's got them tucked away safe at Langley. But we need more talent. One at every SOSUS base. So that's the offer. Just carry on listening, and tell me—only me—what you hear. We'll do the rest, and forget this tape business. You'll be listening for Queen and Country. And furthering your career.”

  “You knew about those ... traces ... already?”

  “Oh sure. We've got a good idea what's making them, too. We're trying to figure out how to make them respond when we want them to, so we can track them. That's what this exercise has all been about, as far as Maerdy's concerned.”

  “The target wasn't the Soviets. Was it?”

  “We're looking for things in the water, Chris. The Soviets don't matter any more. They're history. Ideology's history. Money is freedom and Reagan's pockets are bottomless. The Soviets are busted and the clever ones know it. So what comes next? That's the question, and the answer is: the sea. Full fathom five. The sea's the next frontier. Nobody, but nobody, cares about space any more. SDI is all my eye and there's shit-all else out there. It's empty. Expensive and empty. But the sea, now, the vasty deeps, seven-tenths and all that, who knows what's lurking out there? That's where we're going now, and we'll want people like you who have ... affinities with it.”

  “And all you want me to do is listen.”

  “Sure. Just sit comfortably and listen. Oh, and you can tell us all about your pretty girlfriend upstairs too.”

  “Go to hell, Stone. Or whatever your name is.”

  Stone shrugged. “Think it over,” he said. “For a little while. You don't have many options.” He stood up. “My car's outside. Can I give you a lift to the base?”

  “Just get out of my house.”

  Christopher waited until he heard the car drive away down the track, then went out into the chill November dawn. The encounter with Stone had only taken ten minutes. Fifteen maybe. Of course, he didn't know how long Stone had been in the house before he woke up, but maybe there was still time. There was only one way she could have gone: along the cliff path. He followed, running hard, stumbling along the narrow track. As the grey light grew in the sky, the low dark outline of the island was visible out in the bay. He caught sight for a moment of a figure silhouetted some way ahead of him along the path. The figure disappeared, but he knew where she had gone.

  The way down to the little bay was steep and difficult in the half-light. There was a fine rain falling that made the stone slippery. He had to watch where he put his feet and hold knotted roots of gorse for balance. When he reached the beach of sharp jagged rocks and shingle there was no one to be seen. The tide was halfway out. He could hear the waves breaking on the shore. He stumbled forward, calling.

  “Sara! Sara!”

  As he rounded a high black rock she spoke to him.

  “You can't follow me, Chris.”

  She was standing naked in the rain. She looked thin and cold. The rain had smoothed her black hair over the shape of her head and down her narrow shoulders. A trail of it fell across her face. He saw the fine goosebumps on her arms and the faint blue-pink mottling of the flesh on her legs. Her dark eyes were looking at him with no expression that he could read.

  “Go home,” she said.

  “You're going to the island.”

  “I have to go now, Chris.”

  “Because you told me ... because I know ... it's my fault, isn't it...?”

  “It's what I want.”

  “But I want it, too. I have the gift, too. The sound of that song, it's inside me now, I can't get rid of it. And I've got nowhere else to go. I can't go back. They want me to ... at the base, they know what's out there. They'll come looking. Maybe I can help.”

  “Chris, I'm sorry...”

  It was the same old story. You see her and you need her, and because you need her, you lose her. That's how it always is, for the men on the shore. She wakes up something inside you that never goes back to sleep. It drives you on for ever. You spend the rest of your life looking for her. But you can never actually have her.

  “Chris, I'm not ... whatever you think I am. You've made a mistake.”

  She turned away from him and walked out into the purple-grey water. He watched her until the swell rose against her breasts and she leaned forward into it and began to swim. Her sleek dark head turned to look back at him for a moment. He thought he could see her wide, whiteless brown eyes observing him, like seals sometimes did when he walked on the beach. Then the sea closed over her.

  Christopher stood, shivering, watching the dull grey swell. It had begun to rain.

  There was a thunderous rattling clattering mechanical roar behind him. He ducked instinctively. A Sea King helicopter roared out over the cliff-top, flying low, heading out into the bay.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Peter Higgins

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  * * *

  Short Story: PRAYERS FOR AN EGG

  by Sara Genge

  Sara Genge is a Spanish doctor living and working in Madrid. She has sold short stories to Strange Horizons, Helix SF, Cosmos Magazine, Apex Digest, Weird Tales, and a few others. Sara is a co-founder and regular contributor to www.dailycabal.com, a blog of speculative microfiction. She has participated in Villa Diodati 1 and 2—a pan-European spec fiction workshop for writers living outside the States who don't get the chance to go to regular science fiction conventions. In her first story for Asimov's, the author sets us down on another planet for a hard look at alien biology and social customs.

  Master Gundaro chooses an auspicious time to come claim his bride. The wheat is ripe and mobile, and surges out of the fields and into the garden, poking at the windows, growing through the cracks in the marble portico and even under the stilts that support the house.

  Lasa stands behind the intended, Mistress Jandala, on the portico and clutches the egg bead Dia has given her. She closes her hands into fists and hides them in her robes, ignoring the pain from her cracked calluses. The state of her hands shames her, as does the sunburn on the tips of her tentacles, earned by the long hours spent with the other servants attaching pink ribbons to the swaying stalks of wheat. Old Dia says this is what it means to be a good servant: to be forever shamed by your condition, forever proud of your good work.

  The wind pulls at each ribbon, lifting the stalks by their bountiful heads for the new Master to see, and Lasa allows herself a smile: she's helped turn the estate into a sea of pink and yellow, and pink and yellow are good colors for a wedding.

  And, oh, how beautiful is her lady, Jandala! It makes Lasa proud to look at her Mistress, so refined and perfect, the best example of the High Caste. Jandala's pink mane floats in the air and her tentacles, thin and wispy, surround her head in a delicate corona. Even as she sings, her for
ked tongues remain close to her face so as not to smell the unpleasant odors of the low caste servants around her. Droplets of sweat and saliva collect on her tongues. To Lasa, they look like a dozen small pearls shining in the sunlight.

  Lasa wants to cry from happiness. She can never be more than a servant, but this woman has chosen her to be her jaja-maid and, for a servant, there can be no greater honor.

  When Gundaro jumps out of the carriage, Jandala's shoulders quiver and the sunlight bounces off her nacre skin in subtle iridescence.

  Everyone waits while the trunks are opened and the wind-organ is pulled out in clanging pieces and assembled noisily on the front lawn. When the wind starts moaning through it, the household breaks into cheers. Master Gundaro has claimed his wife and his estate. Their life together has begun.

  “We are married now,” he says, pecking his wife's cheek with a sturdy tentacle.

  “The bonding will be at sunset,” she replies.

  “As you wish,” he chuckles, “although why you women put such store in that ceremony is beyond me.”

  Master and Mistress retreat into the house and Lasa starts preparing for the jaja ceremony. She has already washed and purified herself to meet Master Gundaro, but she still needs to scrape her skin with pumice. Hopefully, pumice stone will also help her calluses.

  * * * *

  “Jaja-woman, Mistress Jandala wants you,” Master says, standing under the doorway with his tentacles in disarray.

  Lasa is embarrassed, although she knows she needn't be. It is appropriate for a jaja-servant to see a Master dishevelled. Gundaro has broken protocol and come to fetch her himself, and she realizes that Master must be eager to impregnate his bride. It is not the first time that he tries to hurry things up: a couple of hours earlier, as Lasa listened behind the door at the ceremony, she heard Gundaro urging the Ceremony Master, muttering that he didn't have time for “prayers and roses.”