Asimov's SF, April-May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  ice wails and the men still caught in them froze there,

  half notes, howling; when those left on deck found their feet

  quick-rimed to wood and began, slowly, to lose themselves

  among the strange, blue statuary they had become;

  as the captain, untouched, moved from man to man,

  sharing with them sparingly what few spirits were left

  from a deerskin flask, praying only that their screams

  would never reach the shore, you must believe he too

  remembered the myth of the Dutchman forever

  doomed to sail the sky, eternity unmoored, till love,

  true and simple as a shoreline, were to tap

  against his bow. You should believe this as well: no seaman

  worth the salt he sails has asked for anything but

  that, just that. Love, a death ship, and a star to sink her by.

  —

  —Bryan D. Dietrich

  Copyright (c) 2008 Bryan D. Dietrich

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Novelette: STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET

  by Kate Wilhelm

  Each of this grand master's four previous publications in Asimov's has been memorable. Three, “With Thimbles, With Forks, and Hope” (November 1981); “The Gorgon Field” (August 1985); and “I Know What You're Thinking” (November 1994), were nominated for major awards, and the fourth, “The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky” (October 1986), brought home the Nebula. These days, she tells us, she leads a quiet life gardening and spending time with friends, family, and cats. Not long ago, she marked the fiftieth anniversary of her first short story's ("The Mile-Long Spaceship") selection for one of the Year's Best anthologies. “I bought a portable typewriter with the money I got for it, the same typewriter I had rented to try to get a decent final copy in the first place.” The bittersweet tale that follows shows us how fortunate it is for all of us that she's still writing as much as ever.

  Strangers When We Meet

  Edith Dreisser cursed under her breath when a gust of wind blew rain into her face as she struggled to close her umbrella before entering the restaurant. The hostess met her with a sympathetic smile and took the umbrella.

  “I'm to meet Dr. Lipsheim,” Edith said, taking off her dripping raincoat. The hostess took that, too, and hung it up.

  “Dr. Dreisser? He's expecting you. This way, please.” She led the way through the dining room, sparsely occupied that late in the afternoon, to a corner booth.

  Cal rose to greet her. He was smiling broadly, both hands outstretched to take hers as he bent to kiss her cheek. “Edie, you're looking wonderful, as usual. And you're cold. Irish coffee? Just to take the chill off ?”

  She grinned and nodded. Cal was seventy or seventy-one, tall and spare, and balder every time she saw him. And he knew how to take off a chill.

  He sent the hostess away after telling her to order them both an Irish coffee.

  “It was so good of you to come on such short notice,” Cal said, resuming his seat across the booth from her.

  “You know perfectly well that an invitation from you is a royal summons,” she said. He had been her advisor, her mentor, and she had worked briefly in the hospital where he had since become the head of the neurology department. She was a research neurophysiologist, or a psychiatrist, depending on which hat she happened to be wearing. Now she had her own graduate students toiling away at her behest. She doubted they would ever hold her in the same kind of near reverence she felt for Cal.

  He handed her a menu. “Let's order when they get around to bringing our coffees,” he said. “Then they'll leave us alone for a time.”

  She had suspected that he had something on his mind other than getting together with an old friend, but she knew there was no point in trying to get to it before he was ready. She consulted the menu.

  After a waiter brought the coffee and took their order, Cal said, “I read your piece in the APA Review. Very good work. It got a buzz, didn't it?”

  Before she could respond, he continued in a thoughtful way, “Mapping the brain. Not a new idea, of course, but a new approach. Like peeling an onion and mapping each segment as you come to it. No one's done that adequately before. How's it coming?”

  “Slowly,” she admitted. “Perhaps an impossible task, ambitious but not doable. The problem with student subjects is that the little wretches’ brains are all different, and just when I think I'm getting ahead, the brat gets terminally bored, or else leaves.”

  Cal laughed softly. “The joys of brain research.” He sipped his coffee.

  “Drop in at the lab some day and have a look at the model I'm constructing. It's pretty awesome.”

  Their food arrived and they chatted about the unseasonable May weather, the worsening traffic day by day in Portland, things inconsequential. Abruptly, Cal pushed his plate back with most of his crab cakes remaining, and he leaned forward.

  “Keep eating,” he said, “while I tell you a story. Let me tell it all and then we can talk about it.” He didn't wait for her nod. “Two weeks ago,” he said, “there was an accident on the Interstate—a propane tanker overturned, exploded, and killed several people. You may recall it from the news. It turned out that a family of three was involved. Donna Hardesty, her son Travis, and her twenty-five-year-old daughter Rebecca. Mrs. Hardesty and Travis were killed. Rebecca escaped with a head injury, a concussion, and some abrasions and bruises. She was brought to the hospital unconscious, treated and held overnight for evaluation. The following day when she woke up, the doctor on duty examined her and told her that her mother and brother had both died. She became hysterical and had to be quieted with a tranquilizer, but she spent the rest of the day and evening in a state of shock. Typical post-traumatic shock reaction. They kept her a second night, and on the following day she was told a second time about the death of her family, with the same reaction. She refused food, and drank so little that they were compelled to start an IV for fluids. The third day was another repeat. They called me at that time.”

  Edith had taken a bite or two as he talked, but then put her fork down and concentrated on what he was saying. “Post trauma amnesia?”

  He nodded. “With a vengeance. Edie, that girl is unable to remember from one day to the next—a period of roughly twenty-four hours. We've run the usual tests, all negative, no overlooked brain trauma. I made up a story that satisfied her about why she was in the hospital. She has no memory of the accident and whatever she is told on day one is forgotten on day two.”

  Edith leaned back and drew in a long breath. “How long has it been now?”

  “Thirteen days. She's twenty-five, twenty-six in June, and has a perfectly normal memory of everything until the day of the accident. She's highly intelligent, due to start graduate studies in paleontology, at your university, by the way. And, frankly, we don't know what to do with her. She can't remain in the hospital, and she can't be turned loose.”

  “Family, other than the immediate ones?”

  “No. Her father died when she was sixteen. He had pancreatic cancer, and his death was a relief to everyone, including him, I imagine. Her mother had no living relatives, and we haven't been able to find anyone else. There's an attorney handling her affairs, her mother's attorney. There's some money, a residence to be sold, life insurance, and there will be more due to the collision. But Rebecca can't live alone, not with daily amnesia for yesterday.”

  He paused, then said, “We had a staff meeting to discuss an institution, a halfway house, a constant home attendant, companion. Anything. She's very intelligent, as I said, and every single day she needs an explanation about why she's where she is. She wants to go back to school, finish her studies.”

  “What story did you tell her?”

  He rubbed his eyes. “I told her that she had dropped off her mother and brother at the airport, which was the plan originally, and that she had driven back to her quad. There was a gas explosion, she was inj
ured, her car totaled, and the quad was damaged and would have to undergo repairs. She accepted it since she had nothing to put in its place. I, or someone else, has told her that same story every day since then. Nine days in a row.”

  “Good God,” Edith said.

  He was watching her closely as he said, “What your research needs is a standard, textbook brain, one that doesn't change with the changing seasons, a single brain that you can map layer by layer until you unravel the whole enchilada.”

  “Cal, I can't take on your patient.”

  “You can. House her in one of those apartments behind the psych building. Make her a research assistant.” He picked up a folder that had been on the bench next to him and laid it on the table. “Everything we've learned about her, complete medical record, schools, everything. Read it overnight and come meet her tomorrow, and then decide.”

  She shook her head. “Cal, no one can protect her outside an institution. On campus there are people who know her, who would commiserate, mention the accident, her mother and brother. Hysterical reaction, a trip to a mental institution—what? Will she notice the change of season? End of school year? That she failed to graduate? Until she can deal with the truth, she'll need a constantly changing story to satisfy her about her situation.” She shook her head harder.

  “Exactly,” Cal said. “That's why a hired attendant wouldn't really work. Someone who understands the whole situation is called for, a professional. Edie, commencement will be in another week, the campus will empty out, her friends will be gone. I'll keep her until after the graduation ceremony. Then, as time passes the accident will fade from memory and there will be less and less likelihood of anyone ever mentioning it. We can come up with a new story for her, and she would be safe there. No one talking to her would ever suspect her amnesia. She's engaging, witty, smart, and she should not be locked away.”

  When she still didn't touch the folder, he added, “Edie, perhaps you can cure her, or find the trigger that shuts down the memory. Perhaps a method to help others recover from amnesia.” More softly he said, “Think of what it would mean to have one brain to work with, one that doesn't get bored, doesn't leave. You could get to the center with such a brain.”

  * * * *

  The first two or three days would be the worst, Keith Adams told himself, leaving the Interstate to head to the condo where his mother and stepfather lived. He could hold up for a few days without any trouble, just smile and nod a lot. The problem was that Theodore Zoelich, his stepfather, had turned into a nut since his buy-out retirement, and his mother was stuck on a single refrain. She wanted a grandchild, and Keith was the only route to gaining one. Theodore was bored. Only sixty-two, early retirement, not a golfer or a fisherman, not a gambler, no discernible hobby interest, he had discovered conspiracies, and he saw them wherever he turned his gaze, or more recently, his telescope. Two or three days, Keith repeated under his breath. Smile. Nod.

  For the past year Keith had taught earth science in a small obscure college in Idaho Falls, and the year before he had taught it in Wyoming, both one-year contracts. But Faye, his mother, always introduced him as a university professor, and in private asked in a brightly interested, non-prying way how his dissertation was coming. If her desire could make it happen, he would be teaching geniuses at Harvard, but in fact he had not touched the dissertation in the past two years.

  It went more or less the way he had anticipated. Faye fluttered about, packing, repacking, making sure he had their car keys, the key to the cabin on the coast. She gave him their itinerary twice, and he didn't remind her that she had emailed it twice before. When he admired her hair, which she was letting go gray since Theodore's retirement, she said, “Well, you know how important it is for a grandchild to have a gray-haired grandma baking cookies for him.”

  “Mother, you don't know how to bake cookies.”

  “I can learn.” See how far I'm willing to go to do my part, she implied by an arch look. He smiled.

  “Keith, come see,” Theodore called from the living room where he had set up his telescope. “I want you to see for yourself what I've been talking about. Those men are going into the building. Just watch.” He turned the telescope over to Keith and picked up binoculars.

  “Military,” Theodore said. “Can't disguise military. I can tell every time.”

  The condo was a dozen blocks from the university, with a clear view of several university buildings through openings between trees. Keith focused without moving the telescope. Two men in gray suits were striding toward the building.

  “Professors,” he said.

  “No way. Professors don't dress like that, don't walk like that. They slouch. And they don't have haircuts like that.”

  “Auditors, insurance adjustors, board of director members. They could be anyone.”

  “Military. The one on the left, he came last week, and now he's back with his superior. Nine in the morning like today. The first one went in, stayed an hour and marched out. And now he's back. They're up to something.”

  Smile, Keith thought, moving away from the telescope as the two men entered the building many blocks away.

  Theodore glanced toward the other end of the living room and lowered his voice. “I want you to keep a log for me. Be on duty at nine, and again at ten to eleven. Now and then through the day. But especially in the morning. Keep a record for me. Something's going on and I could be the only one to suspect, but we have this goddamn trip planned and she'd have my scalp if I cancelled out.”

  Keith nodded. “Sure. No problem.” Cancel! No way. He would promise to stand on his head in downtown Portland an hour a day if that's what it would take to get them on their plane the next morning. They planned to visit Theodore's east coast relatives for a week, spend a week in New York City, then fly to London to start a six-week vacation in Europe. Her life-long dream vacation, Faye had called it.

  He had eight weeks to plan his next move. Everything he owned was now in the condo, his nine-year-old Honda parked outside, his bike locked in a rack in the rear of the building, and there was no job in sight. Spying for an hour a day was a small price to pay for eight weeks of freedom, eight weeks to consider his future. He smiled again, and nodded.

  * * * *

  He did his spying daily for the next week, as promised, and jotted down his results. Zilch. After fulfilling his duty, he often walked or rode his bike on the university grounds, winding in and out among the many buildings, visiting the library, the student union, and he realized he missed it all. The small colleges where he had taught would fit, grounds and all, in a corner of this campus. Not many students were about, just graduate students, a few summer session attendees, visitors. On that afternoon during his second week at home, he spotted a girl, woman—he corrected himself—whom he had seen several times either entering or leaving the building he now knew housed the psychology department. It was the same building the two men in suits had entered.

  He got off his bike and walked it toward her. She was slender, five five, with shiny chestnut colored hair, short with a little curl. That was what he had noticed when he saw her through the lens of the telescope, shiny beautiful hair. The rest of her was as lovely as her hair, he realized, drawing near.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She glanced at him and smiled tentatively without speaking. She was carrying a paleontology textbook, one he recognized, and he nodded toward it. “I noticed the fossil book,” he said. “We used that a few times.”

  “You're studying paleontology, too?”

  “Archeology. We had to read a couple of chapters about fossils. Make sure we could tell the difference between bones and hand-worked stones or something.”

  She laughed. “The bones are more elegant.”

  “And more likely to have teeth marks.”

  She asked if he was a student here, and he found himself telling her about the two schools where he had taught. They both laughed when he said the students couldn't handle it if they called the course ar
cheology, it had to be earth science.

  “At least you have your master's. Did you go here before you decided to teach?”

  “Oregon State. Down in Corvallis. Where are you heading?”

  “Nowhere in particular. Exercise. Maybe get a smoothie, or ice cream.”

  They walked and talked and laughed often. She told him that her mother lived in Silverton, not far from Salem, and about the gas explosion that had wrecked her car and the quad she had been living in. “It seems that I developed some kind of amnesia after the explosion and it's finally clearing up. Enough to let me finish one last paper and go into the graduate program in the fall. The quad's closed for renovations and they let me stay in an apartment on campus for now. Study, work in the psych lab for Dr. Dreisser, catch up. It keeps me pretty busy. As soon as they finish work on the quad I'll move back there. Another few days, probably.”

  “I'm house sitting for my folks this summer while they vacation in Rome, Paris, all those good places. Lucky stiffs.”

  They had reached the student union building, where they both had raspberry smoothies, and afterward started back to the psych building. “I should be out sifting dirt looking for trilobites or something,” she said in mock distress. “How I spent last summer. Cooler in the lab.”

  “I should be looking for a job,” he said, and changed the subject to movies.

  Much too soon they had retraced their steps and approached her building. “I'm Keith, by the way,” he said belatedly.

  “Rebecca,” she said. “I have to go back to work.”

  “See you tomorrow? About eleven, like today? Another smoothie or something?”

  She smiled and nodded. “That would be nice. So long, Keith.”

  He watched her open the door to the building and enter before he got on his bike and started to pedal away. Tomorrow, he told himself, and realized he was grinning like an idiot.

  The next day she didn't show up. He waited until after two, then rode back to the condo. For three days he repeated this, then decided her quad must have reopened and she probably had moved. He didn't know which quad, and he didn't even know her last name. Just Rebecca.