Unidentified Funny Objects 3

by Alex Shvartsman (Ed. )

  “She’s a mermaid,” I say.

  “As long as she’s not that Gypsy girl,” she says, fanning herself with the TV Guide. “Or that lady bartender from last summer. Or the bug woman.”

  “The entomologist,” I correct her.

  “Whatever,” she says. “So tell me about this Purple Mist person.”

  “Like I said, she’s a mermaid.”

  “Like what, she has a tail and spends her whole life in the water?” she asks.

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “Does she wear a bra?” she says suddenly.

  “Ma!” I say, outraged.

  “You heard me—does she wear a bra?”

  “No,” I finally answer.

  “Figures,” she says.

  “What a thing to ask!” I say.

  “What do you want me to ask?” she says. “My son comes home and tells me he’s marrying someone who’s covered with scales and spends all her time swimming in salt water, despite what it must do to her complexion. So can she at least get us a price on fresh fish?”

  “It’s not something I’m real concerned with,” I say.

  “Of course not,” she says. “You’re as impractical as your late father.” She sighs. “All right, so where did this female person go to school?”

  “I don’t think she did,” I say.

  “Ah!” she says with a knowing nod. “Rich family with a private tutor. What temple do they belong to?”

  “Who?”

  “Her family,” she says. “Try to pay attention, Martin.”

  “Martin is your nephew who went broke manufacturing the folding waterbed,” I say. “I’m Milton, remember?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” she says. “What temple do they go to?”

  “They don’t,” I say.

  “They’re Reformed?” she asks.

  I take a deep breath and say, “They’re not Jewish at all,” and then I wait for the explosion.

  It takes about three-millionths of a second—a new record.

  “You’re marrying a shiksa?” she bellows.

  “I’m marrying a mermaid,” I say.

  “Who cares about that?” she screams. “Call my doctor! I’m having a coronary!”

  “Ma, try to understand—there aren’t any Jewish mermaids,” I say.

  “It’s my fault?” she demands. “It’s bad enough that you want to give me grandsons with fins—and how in the world will the rabbi perform the bris?—but now you tell me that their mother’s a goy?”

  “I knew I was gonna have trouble with you,” I say unhappily.

  “Trouble?” she shrieks. “Why should there be trouble? Your Uncle Nate will come by with a knife and a cracker and say, ‘Is this a jar of Baluga caviar?’, and I’ll say ‘No, it’s forty thousand of my grandchildren.’“

  “Will you at least meet her?” I ask.

  “Some conversation we’ll have,” she replies. “She’ll say ‘Blub!’ I’ll say ‘Gurgle!’ and she’ll say ‘Glub!’ and I’ll say ‘I’m getting the folds,’ and she’ll say—”

  “That’s the bends, not the folds,” I explain.

  “Bends, folds, what’s the difference?” she says. “I plan to be dead of a heart attack in two more minutes.”

  “She speaks English,” I say, getting back to the subject.

  “She does?”

  “With a beautiful lilting accent.”

  “I knew it!” she says. “You’re too young to remember, but they drove our people out of Lilting before the last war…”

  “Lilting isn’t a place, Ma,” I say.

  “It isn’t?” she says suspiciously. “Are you sure of that?”

  “I’m sure,” I say. “She really wants to meet you.”

  “I’ll just bet she does,” she says. “She probably wants to feed me to her pet lobster.”

  “I don’t think lobsters eat people,” I say.

  “Aha!” she says. “But you don’t know!”

  “We’re getting off the subject,” I say.

  “Right,” she agrees. “The subject was my imminent death.”

  “The subject was Melora.”

  “What does this fish person who doesn’t wear a bra want with you anyway?” she demands. “Why doesn’t she go elope with some nice halibut?”

  “I met her while I was hunting for treasure,” I say. “It was love at first sight.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you went down there looking for gold and what you came up with was a topless person of the Purple Mist?”

  “You’re making this very difficult, Ma.”

  “You bring home a cod for dinner, and instead of cooking it I have to give it my son, and I’m making this difficult?” she says, just a bit hysterically.

  I figure it’s time to play my ace in the hole, so I say, “She’s willing to convert, Ma.”

  “Into what—a woman with two or more legs?”

  “To Judaism,” I say. “I told her how important it was to you.”

  “How can she convert?” she says. “Do we know any rabbis who can hold services fifty feet under the water?”

  “She can come to the surface,” I say. “How else would we talk?”

  “When did you ever talk to a girl?” she says. “You’re just like your departed father.”

  “We talk all the time,” I say.

  She considers this and finally nods her head. “I suppose there’s not a lot else you can do.”

  “Don’t get personal, Ma,” I say.

  She raises her eyes to the heavens—which are just beyond the lightbulb in the middle of the ceiling—and has another of her hourly chats with God. “He wants me to welcome a lady fish into my family and he tells me not to get personal.”

  “A lady Jewish fish,” I point out.

  “So okay, she won’t be just a fish girl, she’ll be a gefilte fish girl, big deal. What do I feed her? If I give her lox, will she accuse me of cooking her relatives?”

  “She eats fish all the time, Ma.”

  “And when we leave the table to go watch Oprah, do I carry her or does she slither on her belly?”

  “Actually, she doesn’t watch Oprah,” I say.

  “She doesn’t watch Oprah?” she says, and I can tell this shocks her more than the fact that Melora is a mermaid. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She’s never seen a television,” I say. “They don’t have them in her kingdom.”

  “What are they, some kind of Communists?” she demands.

  “They don’t have any electricity,” I explain.

  “You mean she doesn’t even have a food processor?”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “That poor girl!” she says. “And no disposal unit in her sink?”

  “None,” I say, and I can see that suddenly she’s working up a head of sympathy.

  “How can anybody live like that?” she says.

  “She manages just fine.”

  “Nonsense!” she says. “Nobody can live without a trash masher. My son’s wife may be a fish, but she isn’t going to slave thirty hours a day just because I had to!”

  “That’s very thoughtful, Ma,” I say. “But—”

  “Don’t interrupt!” she snaps. “You bring her by this afternoon. I’ll have some knishes ready, and some blintzes, and maybe a little chopped liver, and we’ll watch Oprah and I’ll show her my kitchen and…” Suddenly she stops and re-thinks her schedule. “Bring her earlier and we can watch Dr. Phil, too. And tonight they’re re-running that old series with Lloyd Bridges. It should make her feel right at home.”

  “You’ll like her, Ma,” I promise.

  “Like, shmike,” she says. “If I have to go through life without ever being able to point to my son the doctor, at least I can point to my almost-daughter the gefilte fish girl. Mrs. Noodleman down the block will be so jealous!” She pauses. “We’ll have to put a little meat on her bones.”

  “You haven’t even seen her,” I say.

  “
That’s all right,” she says. “I know your taste in women. Cheap and skinny.”

  “Ma, you think any woman under two hundred pounds is skinny.”

  “And you think any woman who doesn’t ask for ice cubes and a straw with her wine is sophisticated.” She gets up, and I can see she’s getting set for a couple of hours of serious puttering. “Now, you go get her and bring her back, while I prepare something for the poor undernourished thing to eat. And I think I’ll invite Rabbi Bernstein, since we need someone to work with her, and he’s always fishing when he should be at Temple, and…”

  As I leave, she is trying to remember which company sells the pens that write under water so she can send out wedding invitations to the bride’s family.

  ***

  Mike Resnick is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short fiction. He has won 5 Hugos (from a record 36 nominations), a Nebula, plus other major awards in the USA, France, Croatia, Spain, Japan, Catalonia, and Poland. He is the author of 75 novels, close to 300 stories, and 3 screenplays, and the editor of 41 anthologies. He is currently the editor of Galaxy’s Edge magazine. Mike was the Guest of Honor at the 2012 Worldcon.

  Master of Business Apocalypse

  Jakob Drud

  For the last one hundred thirty-one years my job at Mundo Perpetuo has been to stop all the probable and improbable apocalypses that people accidentally invoke. I’ve worked my way up from junior meteor diverter to viral containment specialist, and now, as the most senior staff member, I get to run the Department of Mixed Ends of the World. If the dinosaurs return, or civilization as we know it is threatened by falling anvils, Old Joe steps up to bat.

  And still, some days the world takes me by surprise, like the day when Paula Johnson greeted me in the lobby with these words: “Mr. Inflectus. I am to inform you that our new CEO, Mr. Halen, has called a meeting of all department heads at 9:00 A.M., and that you are now five minutes late.”

  Around the office I just go by the name of Joe, so her salutation stopped me dead in my tracks. “And, eh, a very formal morning to you too, Ms. Johnson. New CEO, you said?”

  Paula just cracked her knuckles, a gesture I knew as danger incarnate. Her magic was capable of manipulating physical objects in disturbing ways, which made her the best security chief in the northern hemisphere. She was also an archivist of unrivalled skills, and both abilities had saved my life time and again. If she felt threatened, I did, too.

  I power-stepped up the stairs, one flight at a time, wondering what we needed a CEO for. We’d been without a nominal leader for the last eight years since our former director had fired himself for being redundant. But when I entered Conference 2, I knew right away that our new CEO would never reach a similar conclusion. He was a young white guy with flashy teeth, a black Armani suit and a shave so close he must have had his hair follicles surgically removed.

  “Joseph Inflectus? From Mixed Ends of the World? Glad you could finally join us,” he said, mistaking acidity for authority. “Please have a seat. Now, as I was telling everyone before you chose to show up, I am your new boss, and you may address me as Mr. Halen.”

  I’m not big on self-imposed authority, and I’m afraid it showed in the way I sat down next to Antonio Suarez from Pandemics: as slowly as I possibly could, I waited until Mr. Halen drew breath to speak again, and then found my most casual voice.

  “Have you ever directed a magical department before, Mr. Halen?”

  “Of course not. You’re the only one in the country.”

  “That you know of,” said Ingrid Blunt from Nuclear Holocausts. “Do you have any experience with enchantments, summoning, or protection spells?”

  That got a laugh and a flash of those bright, shiny teeth. “Don’t worry, I’m leaving the hokus pokus to the professionals. My qualifications are in leadership. I’ve got an MBA from Yale. When I was office intern at WaterHome Crunch, I took a BPCD at BPCC and soon graduated to internal office department HoC. After WaterHome Crunch I moved on to—”

  Speaking of hokus pokus. I cleared my throat Archwizardly, that is to say, in the way that made people Pay Respectful Attention.

  Mr. Halen just looked annoyed. “Yes?”

  “Mundo Perpetuo has prevented every conceivable apocalypse in the last seventy-five centuries, saving Earth and mankind at least a thousand times over. Proof of our efficiency: you’ve not been turned into a vampire, infected with a deadly virus, irradiated, flattened by a meteor, smothered by a vengeful deity, or drowned in an antediluvian tide. We intend to keep you and the rest of the world that way. The question is, Mr. Halen, what you bring to the table.”

  He showed his teeth and steepled his fingers. “I’m going to increase turnover. Together we’ll make profits skyrocket.”

  The last word made B.S. Belamy, head of Alien Invasions, flinch habitually. The horror I read on the other faces had been conjured by another phrase.

  “You may be CEO, Mr. Halen,” said Manfred Parsons, head of Undead Outbreaks. “But continue to think that way and you’ll be DOA.” Working zombie apocalypses for half a century had blunted Parson’s sense of humor and situational awareness. Zombies need a firm hand, not subtlety.

  “What Parsons means is that we don’t need increased turnover.” I stressed the last word. “The fewer apocalypses we have to prevent, the better.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” Mr. Halen said. “As of today, Mundo Perpetuo is paid for every alien/nuclear/zombie/rapture disaster we prevent. It’s all in the new guidelines from the Board of Directors.”

  Only Flower Agyll, head of Supernatural Endings, crossed her arms as if to indicate further resistance. “Let me guess,” she said. “Your bonus depends on the bottom line.”

  He beamed. “My PowerPoint presentation will explain everything in detail.”

  Everybody’s eyes glazed over until Chai Chen from Natural Disasters mouthed the words of the 3P protection spell.

  ###

  Flower Agyll guessed right, which became very clear four hours into the presentation when Mr. Halen laid out a long list of expenditure cuts. Those included the demand that everyone put in extra hours, a preliminary 10 percent staff cut, and a plan to use cheaper materials for our spells.

  Which was why I made it my first priority to visit Madison Stars, Chairman of the Intact Foundation. The foundation was our meal ticket, a money hoard directed by seven imaginative people, who understood how many different ends the Earth would see if it weren’t for Joe and the crew. Madison Stars herself knew just enough magic to do no harm, but her real skills lay in finance and leadership, where she had an efficient yet caring way with people.

  But the minute I laid out my grievance, her friendliness evaporated. I suddenly felt like a tool in her presence. Like a coat stand, albeit a specially commissioned, one-of-a-kind coat stand.

  “Harlan Burgeson and Tara LeGoff resigned last week to spend more time with their families,” she explained. “Instead we got two guys from a bank, and they pointed out that we could save a lot of money and use the surplus to support another charity, like cancer research or new antibiotics. These guys just can’t wrap their head around the idea that your organization takes precedence over all others.”

  “I’d love to wrap their heads around something for you.”

  “Except we have those pesky rules, don’t we?” Meaning the Wizard Code and the death sentence awaiting any out-of-line magic user.

  “Look, we can try Halen for a while,” I said. “Some of the Vietnamese reagents he’s ordered really are a bargain compared to the handpicked organic kind. But I don’t see how bringing in a CFO and a HR department is going to save money, and trust me, you don’t want to risk us being underfunded.”

  “It’s new times, Joe. Everybody’s underfunded.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder, squeezed it firmly. The encouraging touch of an experienced leader who knew that change could tax an employee, but also the firm grip of a leader bent on her current strategy. F
or all my respect for Madison, it still felt like being held from the scruff of the neck by a very big hellhound. And trust me, I know how that feels.

  ###

  Mr. Halen’s HR department fired twenty of our two hundred wizards the next week. Fortunately, it was a light week with only one massive meteor impact to prevent and one invasion of an algae-like species that threatened to cover the oceans in a rock-hard surface, and we had advance warning against both apocalypses.

  All magical apocalypses siphon off a lot of energy from the magical field that separates the Earth’s inner and outer core. It doesn’t matter where on Earth the apocalypse is going to start, or who starts it. A trained apocalypse wizard can sense the waning magical field as a weakening in their own powers.

  We call it advance warning when the siphoning starts long before the actual spell is called down. That means the energy gathers in a particular area—just where a crazy cult is about to light a bonfire and read out loud from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook, for instance. It’s easy to pinpoint the energy, so I can just show up on the night of the bonfire, call up a rainstorm to put out the fire, and voila: the world doesn’t meet a culinary end, and the energy is reabsorbed in the Earth’s core.

  In other cases, we have no warning. That’s when we get to stop rifts in the fabric of reality, and that’s where having extra magicians on your payroll is usually really handy. And of course, our next six weeks were filled with such incidents.

  Flower Agyll and her Supernatural Endings staff worked around the clock to stuff fire-breathing imps back through rifts appearing all over the globe and manipulate people’s memory to allow them to sleep again. At one time she even had demons invading her office, and we all had to pitch in with salt and banishing spells before Mr. Halen found out and told her to work from home over the weekend. I also got to spend an eventful Thursday night in the Rocky Mountains where a cult was trying to call down the Rapture using a black cat and a pentagram of albino rats. Their amateur chant would most likely only have ignited Mount St. Helens, but I stopped them anyway on principle.