Asimov's SF, April-May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “You've lived with Dominic, loved him, been loved by him, for six decades. A part of him has literally become a part of you. Now, I could access your life and try to excise that part. But it's a monstrous and destructive procedure. It affects more than just your memory. It affects the world you and Dominic built together.”

  “Do it anyway,” Tim said.

  The Executor sighed. His hands enveloped his knees. “That's foolish, Tim. I'm not ready to give up.” He leaned over and picked a rose from the plot surrounding the fountain. In the bright garden his long black sleeve, a rectangle stretching darkly across the scene, had the absurd incongruity of a censored image. “The mind has its own rules, its own design. It has to be accepted for what it is. It has to be—dare I say it?—treated with respect.” He plucked petals from the rose with deft pecks of his finger and thumb, spinning the flower by the stem. “There must be an event, a signal, an act. A way for you to see him go. An illusion that makes the reality complete.”

  The rose was denuded. He laid the stem on the bench.

  “I know that,” said Tim. “But it seems so absurd. You already made it happen. Everything. We went through it; it's been done. I mean, what more can the world want from me?”

  The Executor nodded slowly. He lifted one great hand, let it hang in the air. It descended like a leaf onto Tim's shoulder.

  “People had it easy, in the old days,” he said. “A death simply happened to them. We have to create one.”

  * * * *

  Tim prepared for bed slowly, laying out the next day's clothes with fastidious care, switching the pattern of the sheets on the bed, meditating at the window to prepare his mind for sleep. He had set the nightfall on his property to begin automatically at eight o'clock, but this evening he delayed the setting of his private sun, holding a red glow above the horizon, pushing the stars back into the sky. When he finally went to bed, he didn't fall asleep immediately. He lay still, and thought.

  * * * *

  Dominic had decided to die in September.

  He was old: a hundred and forty-three years. It was surreal, that number; Dominic still looked the same. His black beard bristled from a forty-something face; his eyes were bright and his teeth were strong. But the signs had appeared, and they were quickly getting worse. In many ways, he had already begun to die.

  It was frustrating, mysterious, but it happened to everyone. The mind went swiftly and irrevocably stale. New experiences no longer enticed, old memories no longer surfaced. Dominic disappeared into a maze of strict routines. He woke every morning at precisely the same time, structured every day down to the minute. If change disturbed his schedule, he panicked, wept. He needed to have the bed made just so, his bagel buttered just so; he needed sandwiches ordered from the same shop every day. Eventually he limited his diet to bread and bananas; other foods had no taste for him, he said. The truth was clear, but unspoken: he'd forgotten how to taste them.

  He refused to travel: it confused him, made him forget his home. He never read, never watched films, never remembered new people. Tim came home once to find him in an armchair in the dark, Mozart's twenty-fifth concerto filling the room. Dominic played the piece all night, all through the next day. Tim checked the counter surreptitiously, late that evening. The song had played, in total, three hundred times in a week, a thousand times in the previous month.

  “Don't you get tired,” he said, “of the same piece?”

  But Dominic only shushed him.

  At last they couldn't avoid the truth, couldn't pretend anymore. Dominic made roast chicken he could no longer taste, bought wine he no longer enjoyed. He prepared a dinner table set with Japanese plates and glasses, silver cutlery and candles—a break from his strict routines. He said, “I've been thinking things over,” and Tim began to cry.

  They debated, fought, endured long silences. But it had to be done. Dominic signed the termination forms on his provenance and history, wrote his will, approved the handling of his backup records. They planned their last night: the sleigh ride, the cabin. Too soon, they sat on the feather-stuffed couch before the fire, watching pictures of sailing ships and mermaids rise from burning pinecones on the grate.

  Dominic searched for Tim's hand beneath the quilt. “It's time,” he said.

  And Tim slipped. He didn't mean to. He only closed his eyes. But the scene crashed and broke around him like a wave. He felt the structure of it swirl into confusion around his head, fragments of existence cutting at his cheeks. He stood, staggered. But there was nothing to stagger toward. He felt himself plunge, rise; then he was standing on a patch of life, a white island in a sea of void. He crouched, reached down, felt snow on his fingers. Slowly he reconstructed the world, the snowfield flickering into being like a mad puzzle, the trees sidling up out of empty space. Ripples of detail ran out from his feet, shadows and sparkles appeared in the snow, needles emerged from the green blur of the forest. He saw the cabin in front of him, and opened the door.

  The fire spat and crackled. Two empty mugs sat on the coffee table. The leather-bound album lay open on the floor.

  He crossed the room slowly. The couch was empty. Only a warm depression in the cushions indicated how recently it had been occupied.

  He felt his knees tremble, giving out beneath him. Relief shuddered through him, and he groped for a chair. He sat, breathing deeply, focusing on his body: the realness of it, the immediacy, the comfort of ancient physical processes. His breathing slowed, grew even; he felt his head clear, felt the relief grow real.

  He had missed it. He'd been spared. The whole scene had happened and concluded, had been resolved; and he hadn't needed to watch a single moment. It was over, really over. Dominic was gone.

  * * * *

  Tim woke suddenly, kicked away the sheets, listened to the darkness as his consciousness coalesced. He heard no distant movement, no sound of slamming drawers. He was just about to turn on the light and find a book when a voice murmured beside him in the bed.

  “Where am I? What's happening?”

  “Dominic?” Tim said.

  “Tim? Where are you?”

  Tim breathed deeply, swallowed. He put out a hand. Cool sheets brushed his palm. The other side of the bed was empty.

  “I keep feeling,” Dominic's voice said, “like I forgot to do something. You know that feeling? Like when you have a stressful dream? And you wake up, and can't remember it, but it sticks with you anyway? But then I think back, and it's all vague and dark. I just keep thinking that I need to be with you.” He was silent for a moment. “Where am I now?”

  “You're with me,” Tim said.

  He heard Dominic sigh. Tim closed his eyes, concentrating. After a moment, he felt the world shift. It was easy, this time, brief and natural as a breath. When he opened his eyes, he was in the cabin, and Dominic sat beside him on the couch.

  “Ah,” said Dominic quietly. “Here we are.” He reached toward the coffee table. “And—look. Here's our book.”

  The album fell open with a whisper in his lap. He turned the pages, smiling, and scenes bloomed on the creamy paper. Tim saw their life together dance by in a flutter of moments. “Remember?” Dominic said in his low and musical voice. “That bridge in Paris? The river below? This doesn't do it justice. The sun was different, somehow.” He held a block of pages with his thumb, let them slip free one by one. “And here's that café. Those terrible chairs. You looked much more handsome, I remember, in real life. It's weird. Even these perfect recordings—there's something they never catch. Something about a scene when it's really new, when you come to it at that time in your life. The air, the sound of the water, the way little things come together ... I felt things for you, that day, I'd never felt before.” He closed the book. “I guess no recording will ever capture that.”

  “I remember it,” Tim said. “How it felt. All of it.”

  Dominic reached for Tim's hand—his fingers were warm and tense. The fire settled with a cough. Big snowflakes tapped the windows. They sat
quietly as spirits, barely touching hands.

  “It's time now, isn't it?” Dominic said.

  Tim shook his head.

  “Oh, honey, don't cry. We planned this all out. I'm just tired, I'm so tired. I'm tired of having to remember everything.”

  “But...” Tim fought for control of his voice. “You and me.”

  “I know. But it's time to stop. We have our book, you'll always have that. And I'm just worn out.” Dominic's voice faltered. He patted Tim's hand. “Turn up the snowfall,” he said.

  Tim went to the painting on the wall, held out his hand. He blew across his palm at the gray painted sky, and the flurry of white flakes in the scene grew wilder. Outside the window, a sudden wind moaned. The flakes that tapped the windowpanes grew thicker, multiplied.

  “Why don't you make some hot chocolate?” Dominic said.

  The red pot was already warming on the stove. The rich drink inside it had just begun to bubble. Tim turned off the heat, poured two mugs, and opened the cupboard. He was startled to see the little bottle sitting inside. It was foolish to be surprised, after all their plans and decisions. Even so, his hand shook as he took the bottle from the shelf, poured the white powder it contained into Dominic's mug.

  “Come here,” Dominic said, and patted the couch.

  Tim set the two mugs on the table, sank to the cushions. Dominic sipped thoughtfully. “Drink it, hon. It came out good.”

  “I can't.”

  “It tastes wonderful.”

  “I really can't.”

  Dominic finished his mug and sat back. He shifted on the cushions, laid his head in Tim's lap. “You know, everything's perfect. This is just how I wanted it. I've been feeling so lost, so confused, for so long. But now I don't feel that way anymore.”

  Tim passed his fingers through Dominic's hair, feeling the fineness, the realness of the strands. “I'm so sorry, hon. I knew what I had to do. I just lost control; I just slipped away. I've never had that happen, not since I was a kid. But I couldn't watch you go. I tried, I really did.”

  “It's gentle, you know,” said Dominic. “It doesn't hurt.” He had his eyes closed, and was breathing through his mouth.

  “I know. But to see it, to see you really go ... It broke the whole world for me, it made everything come apart. It was as if ... as if suddenly I just disappeared. I was in this dark place, this big empty void. I guess I really couldn't believe in a world without you.” Tim rested a hand on Dominic's cheek. “That must have been where you were: that empty place. And I sent you there, because I couldn't stand to see it. Because a part of me refused to watch you go away.” Tim leaned forward. “Honey? Can you hear me?”

  Dominic took Tim's hand, held it to his chest. He breathed deeply and slowly. “I'm glad you're here with me.”

  The snowflakes whispered against the window glass, and the fire spoke to itself in snaps and pops. Tim lifted his head and passed his eyes over the room. He imagined the ceiling strewn with cobwebs, dust making specters of the wooden furniture. He imagined the paintings cracked with age, the cabinets warped and the fire defunct. He imagined the coffee table bare, the quilt ruined, the empty couch leaking feathers through broken threads.

  He eased out from under Dominic's head, lowering it gently with his palms. He stroked the hairs a last time, and the still-warm cheeks; and he unfolded the quilt and spread it over the couch. From the coffee table, he picked up the leather-bound album, tucking it under his arm. Then he went to the window to watch the thickening snowfall, the countless flakes that were slowly erasing the world.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Nick Wolven

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  * * *

  Novelette: AN ALIEN HERESY

  by S.P. Somtow

  S.P. Somtow was born in Thailand, grew up in Europe, and had a career in music in the 1970s before emigrating to America. “A Day in Mallworld,” his first story for Asimov's (as Somtow Sucharitkul), appeared in our October 1979 issue. After numerous stories for us, he tells us he “graduated to fantasy, horror, and historical novels; went off to a monastery in Thailand; reemerged as a composer of operas; and founded the Bangkok Opera.” Although he has been very busy writing and premiering grand operas, he found he'd hit a fiction writer's block that lasted for seven years. That dry spell broke suddenly with the penning of “An Alien Heresy.” This science fiction story offers the reader an intensely disconcerting look at a medieval inquisitor's reaction to the unknown.

  A word of warning: there are scenes in this story that may be disturbing to some readers.

  * * * *

  An Alien Heresy

  I am not a heretic. I am a being from another world. I am lost. Send me home, I beg you.

  You may say I am young to be an inquisitor, but in my brief existence in this world I have not remained unexposed to evil. For, in the Fourteen Hundred and Fortieth Year of Our Lord, I was a novice in the service of the Bishop of Nantes, and because I could scribe a fair round cursive hand, I was often called upon to set down confessions of such horror that it is hard to think of them even years later without a shudder; I mean revelations of deviltry, sorcery, and heresy as would awaken doubt in the stoutest believer, and drive the purest of souls into the abyss of despair.

  Thanks to that legible hand, I was appointed one of the scriveners at the trial of Gilles de Rais, called Bluebeard, and I was compelled to write down, dispassionately and accurately, descriptions of the mutilation of small children, onanistic rituals, and perversions I had never even imagined. And when at last the Marshall of France came to be burned at the stake, I was asked to expunge some of the more lurid details from the record, for fear that the truth might give too much distress to future generations; and so my much-vaunted penmanship proved to be mere vanitas. What was torn from the pages, however, could not be expunged from our souls. We were scarred by it, and it still gives us nightmares.

  Yet even that infamous trial could not prepare me for my encounter with the lost soul who claimed to have come from another world. It was only through the sternest self-discipline that I managed to survive the interrogation with my soul, to all appearances, intact.

  The Gilles de Rais case was a dozen years ago, and now I was returning to Tiffauges, that cursed place where Bluebeard perpetrated his crimes. I was to investigate a new incident. It was a simple, open-and-shut case, just the kind of thing a junior inquisitor can handle in a week's work. His Grace the Bishop of Nantes used to favor me, and often assigned me such routine cases, which help one to rise in the bureaucracy of the church and are not intellectually taxing.

  These were the details: a fire from the sky. A strange man, mud-soaked, naked, seen by the river's edge. A strange man with strange eyes. Perhaps a demon; more likely a natural man, or a village idiot who had wandered back to the wrong village. I was either to quell their superstitions or, if necessary, act as the proper representative of the Church Militant.

  Routine indeed. But of course no one wanted to travel to Tiffauges. I could feel the gloom long before I came in sight of the castle. Only three days by oxcart it might have been, but it felt as though I had left the world of men and entered a kingdom of ghosts. Beyond the hamlet of St. Hilaire de Clisson, it seemed that the sky became perpetually gray. Though it was already March, much snow still lay on the ground. The River Crame was still part frozen, and, where it joined the Sévre Nantaise, which is where the castle stands, ice clanged against ice.

  When we arrived in the village, the sun was already going down. We were well stocked with provender, and we had brought all the instruments for the Question with us, in case none could be found locally. Ahead of me rode two knights, or rather a knight and his squire. I had not bothered to find out their names. In the cart with me sat Brother Paolo, a Roman musician and general note-taker, the dour-faced Brother Pierre, and the ever-smiling Jean of Nantes, a genial fellow, by avocation a barber, by trade a torturer. And I, of course, another Jean of Nantes—how many are there, I wonder?—who am called Lenclud.


  A few hours behind us marched the secular arm, a small detail of a dozen foot soldiers and a captain on horse; they would reach the village by midnight, perhaps, and would camp in the field.

  My traveling companions had been garrulous all through the journey. Now, in the sunset, they could all feel the oppression in this village. No children played in the one muddy path that ran through the center, where stood a well. The huts were hushed. One, a little larger, seemed to pass for an inn. A bit of light came from within and there had been noise, although the sound of our horses and oxen seemed to still it.

  “We should press on,” I called out to the knights, our escort. “It's barely one league to the castle.”

  The chateau had been abandoned since the trial, but it must at least have walls, and a fireplace, and a room in which to conduct interrogations.

  “We'll put up in the inn,” said the elder of the two.

  I had certain reasons for avoiding that, but they were not reasons I could admit. I said, “Sir chevalier, another hour's riding at best will bring us to a place with stone walls; we'll have a roaring fire and we'll be able to sleep in real beds. And not have to pay,” I added, for the execution of Gilles de Rais had made his lands temporarily forfeit to the church, until such time as all the rights and papers were sorted out.

  “All very well for you to say, mon pére,” said the knight. “But think of us. And my squire's frightened; he's heard the stories.”

  The younger one turned around and I saw that he was, indeed, younger than I had thought from just seeing the back of his head for three days; but I had to hold to my word, lest authority be lost. It is in our training.

  “We're not here to disrupt the village,” I said. “The inquisition is not a circus. Let's get to the castle as quickly as possible, set up, and have the case brought to us properly.”