“Who's they?"
“Whoever's running this saucer. Move!"
Joey walked again, faster. “Will we meet more like that?"
“Not unless we walk. Or I don't think so."
“Vaya Con Dios” sighed away to silence; but the band was there and playing for a long while afterward, something about stars getting in people's eyes and a moon that broke a heart.
The doctor appeared around a bend in the twisting tunnel just as the music ended, a dark, lean man with profile that might have been hacked from wood with a chain saw. “Dr. Leonard!” Josephine looked radiant. “How did you get here?"
“Kidnapped. I imagine the same thing happened to you. Do you want to get out? To go home?"
Josephine exclaimed, “Do we ever!” but Joey held his peace.
“Good. I'm going to need you, Miss Bates. I'm going to need that strapping young man with you even more. There are six of them on board. They're not strong, but I doubt that I could handle all six by myself."
“You're going to take over the saucer?"
“We are. Or anyway, we're going to try. They've let me see a little—more than they thought I was seeing, I expect. We're still orbiting Earth, although we're keeping behind the moon for the most part. As long as we are, I think I can get us back. Setting us down safely should be no problem. There's a sophisticated system for preventing crashes. Let's go."
Joey asked, “How about weapons?"
“I've got some hidden. I'll show you. Come on!"
Dr. Leonard strode away and turned into a side passage. When Joey and Josephine reached the corner, he was nowhere in sight.
She sighed. “I knew that one was too good to be true. He's a doctor—the real one is, I mean. I guess I think doctors can fix just about everything."
Joey nodded. “A lot of women are like that."
“But they can't, and they'll tell you so themselves. There are diseases they can't cure, and everybody dies sooner or later, no matter how many doctors work to keep them alive. Hug me, Joey."
He did, and they kissed.
“That was good,” she said when they parted for the third time, “I needed to feel somebody real. They're watching us. You know that?"
He shrugged.
“They're bound to be. They're watching us the way guys in the psych department used to watch the mice in their mazes. They saw us kiss."
“I don't care,” Joey said.
“Neither do I. All right, I do. Really I do. I don't like being watched by people I can't see. I'd like to get even with them someday, and maybe I will."
Slowly, hand in hand, they walked along the passage. When they had gone a hundred steps or more, she said, “Why do they do it?"
“Study us? I don't know."
“Show us Dr. Leonard. Shep Fields. All the dream people."
“You told me how they got you,” Joey said. “I didn't tell you how they got me."
“You said I wouldn't believe it, and I didn't want to pressure you."
“Thanks. Now I am, probably. I guess I will. My mom and dad have an apartment in Chicago. I've got a job, but I still live with them. That probably sounds like I'm one of those kids who won't grow up."
“Only I know you're not,” Josephine said. “Go on."
“I'd like to have an apartment of my own, sure. Or maybe a place I'd share with somebody and we'd split the rent, but I pay five hundred a month to mom and dad for rent and food and they need the money. It's a really nice apartment in a really nice building. My dad's retired now, and they couldn't afford to keep it if it weren't for the money I kick in. None of this is what I started out to say."
“No hurry,” she told him. “We're walking anyway, and we might as well talk to pass the time."
“Well, I ran into the super one day, and he wanted to know if I'd seen what they'd done to the roof. I said no, and he said there were all sorts of trees and flowers and stuff up there now, like a park for the tenants, and we could bring guests up if we wanted. So I went up and had a look around. It was maybe six o'clock, and the sunset was really, really pretty.
“The roof was, too. There were pots and planters. Little trees and flowers and so on. Ferns, too. I remember a lot of ferns. Maybe I didn't notice the flowers so much because they were closing. They close up at night just like stores, or some of them do. I read about that someplace."
Josephine nodded.
“Looking at that sunset with all that green around me reminded me of a big green-glass bottle I had when I was a kid. I'd put bugs and things in there so I could study them. That's what I thought I was doing, anyway. I'd take it along when we went to the park, and if I found an interesting bug or a big spider I'd put it in there. Back home, I'd watch it and pretend I was a scientist. My mother finally got tired of finding it with dead bugs in it and pitched it out."
“I don't think I like where this is going."
“Neither do I. Another thing I wanted to say is that I really did learn something from watching all the bugs in that green bottle. What I learned was that sometimes they thought they were seeing other bugs when they saw their own reflections in the glass. I think that's what's going on with us—we're seeing our own reflections, seeing things we've got in our brains. The aliens or whatever they are may not even know we're seeing them. But we are.” He recalled Shep Fields’ band and added, “We hear them, too. Maybe we'd even smell them, if we got close enough."
“I think so, too,” Josephine said, “only I think they know about it. You knew about it when you watched your bugs, and you were just a little kid. They're a lot smarter than you. Smarter than you were then, I mean."
“Smarter than I am now."
“Smarter than both of us put together, probably. I still want to get out—to get back home. Did you ever turn your bugs loose, Joey?"
He could not remember, but he said he had and his mother had freed more.
“Then we've still got a chance. If ... It's another one."
The tall man striding toward them waved. “Captain Anno of the Past Police at your service.” To the wave, he attached a jocular salute. “I know you think I'm just a character in a movie. You need me just the same, and I'm here to help you."
“You mean you're not?” Josephine sounded incredulous.
“No, ma'am. The film was a little piece of propaganda on our part. You're entering a period of increased Zkogan activity, and our film was intended to get you accustomed to the concept and show you that we're the good guys. Which we are. You want to be rescued, don't you? If you don't, I'll split."
“You bet we do,” Josephine said.
Joey nodded his agreement.
“Fine. I'm not allowed to bring you into your future, you understand—uptime into my own period. It's against regulations."
Joey nodded again. “It was in the movie."
“Right. What I can do, if you want, is return you to a time moments after the Zkogan seized you. They'll be gone by then. You may or may not remember all this. If you do, you may repress it.” Captain Anno raised his palms in a gesture of amused helplessness. “Ultimately, that'll be up to you. I can't control it. Do you want to go?"
“Yes,” Joey told him.
“Absolutely,” Josephine added, “but I want to ask one question first. Just one. May I?"
“We've plenty of time.” Captain Anno smiled. “Fire away."
“Why are our names so much alike? I mean Joey's and mine. My Aunt Virginia used to say coinkydink. Is that what this is? Just coinkydink?"
“No.” The captain's face was serious now, and even a trifle hard. “The Zkogan are working their way through the alphabet. There was a time when they took half a dozen men named Ambrose, for example. We'd love to know why they operate in that fashion, but we don't. We're hoping that when they get down to Zeke and Zelda they'll stop. But we're afraid it's going to be something much worse."
Joey said, “You could just go there, couldn't you? And see?"
“I'm afraid not. That time lies in my own
future. You can fall to the floor, Joey. You can do that very easily. Let's see you fall to the ceiling."
Captain Anno turned toward Josephine. “Close your eyes, please. Close them and keep them closed. It's very important. Crucial, in fact. When I say ‘go,’ you are to rap your heels together three times, understand? One, two, three. Neither less nor more. After the third such rap, but only then, you may open them. Is that understood? If it's not, I can go over it again."
Josephine nodded.
He turned back to Joey. “You heard me, and the escape and evasion procedure will be the same for you. Try to time your heel raps to coincide with hers. The closer you come, the better off you'll be, both of you. Got it?"
“Got it,” Joey said wearily. He had been trying to pretend he thought Captain Anno real; in a sudden epiphany, he understood that Josephine was doing the same.
“Good. Shut your eyes, both of you, and wait for my signal."
Joey did not quite close his, and through their slits watched Captain Anno fade away.
“He's gone,” Josephine said, “and we're not. I'm just so tired."
“I understand."
“I want to sleep. I'm going to lie down right here. This place is as good as any place in this whole terrible place. You can lie down, too, if you want to."
He did not, but sat down at her head.
“Maybe I can dream about home,” she whispered.
After a minute or two she added, “Maybe when I wake up, they'll have given us water, and something to eat."
Still later, when he thought she might be asleep, she said, “I know what you'd like to do and I'd like to do that, too, but not while they're watching. Tell me about your green bottle again. Tell me all that stuff, and finish it. Maybe it will help me sleep."
If she isn't real, Jody thought, she'll fade away when she sleeps.
Or when I do.
Stroking her hair, he watched her, finding her as warm and real as ever. “I'd had this green glass bottle when I was a kid. I guess it was an old wine bottle or something. I'd put bugs and spiders in there so I could watch them. I told you about all that.
“Then when I went up on the roof where the garden was, there was green all around. It wasn't quite dark, but I think I might have seen one or two stars if I'd looked for them. It was quiet and green everyplace. Very quiet, because there was nobody up there but me. Nobody at all, Josephine, just me all alone."
Her breathing seemed to him to gave grown softer and more regular. Still stroking her, he continued.
“It was all green, because the flowers had closed. They're candy stores for bees, really, but the bees had gone to bed and the flowers had closed their doors. The plants had gone to sleep, and the birds had gone home, if there had been any birds.
“I sat on one of the benches for a while, thinking about the trees and flowers and how all those things would still be there when our building had been torn down and nobody remembered it at all. After a while, I got up and sat on one of the swings. I had walked all over the roof, and knew I couldn't get off it on any side. There was the street on the east and the alley on the west. There were other buildings north and south, but they were too far away for me to jump to. Too far, and a lot lower than ours anyway.
“It reminded me of that old green bottle my mother had thrown away a long time ago, and that reminded me that I had seen a green bottle up there on the roof while I was walking around. So I went looking for it and found it pretty easily. It was a soft drink bottle, some kind of lemon-lime drink. I don't like those—I like Pepsi or Dr. Pepper. But someone else had liked them and had brought a cold bottle up to the roof to drink, and then had put the bottle in one of the planters instead of taking it back to his apartment.
“I took it back to the swing and sat down again and just sort of looked at it and thought about my old bottle. How had the bugs felt in there? I had watched them trying and trying to get out, but I had never thought at all about how they felt.
“Then I turned that bottle inside out, so that I was inside and the whole world was outside. And when I did that, just an hour or so ago, here I was. Maybe we'd be home if I could turn it the right way again."
His hand still stroked, but it seemed to him that it stroked nothing, that the silky smoothness of her soft brown hair had slowly drained away as he spoke. He looked down. His fingers were fading even as they moved, their tips vanished already, the rest translucent, unsure, and unreal.
Copyright © 2007 Gene Wolfe
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
DEAD MONEY
by Lucius Shepard
"I have so many good memories concerning Asimov's SF, they'd be impossible to list. Meeting Isaac up in the old offices on Lexington Ave. My friendship with Gardner and Sheila. Perhaps my most salient memory among many kindnessess done relates to a time when I was incapacitated, living in New York, and working on a story that used the I Ching, and Sheila persuaded her husband, David, to run all over Manhattan to find me the proper translation. Best of luck to the magazine for the next thirty years."—Lucius Shepard
Lucius Shepard's first story for Asimov's SF, “A Traveler's Tale,” appeared in our July 1984 issue. His latest novella, “Dead Money,” which returns to the eerie milieu of his first book, Green Eyes (Ace Special, 1986), is his twenty-seventh tale to appear in our pages. These stories have won the Hugo, the Nebula, and and our own Readers’ Awards, and many of them have been reprinted in his two World Fantasy Award Winning Collection, The Jaguar Hunter (1988) and The Ends of the Earth (1992). Nightshade Books has just published the author's most recent novel, Softspoken, and a new short story collection will be out in the summer.
* * * *
A word of warning: there are scenes in this story that may be disturbing to some readers.
* * * *
I knew slim-with-sideburns was dead money before Geneva introduced him to the game. Dead money doesn't need an introduction; dead money declares himself by grinning too wide and playing it too cool, pretending to be relaxed while his shoulders are racked with tension, and proceeds to lose all his chips in a hurry. Slim-with-sideburns-and-sharp-features-and-a-gimpy-walk showed us the entire menu, plus he was wearing a pair of wraparound shades. Now there are a number of professional poker players who wear sunglasses so as not to give away their tells, but you would mistake none of them for dead money and they would never venture into a major casino looking like some kind of country-and-western spaceman.
“Gentlemen,” Geneva said, shaking back her big blonde hair. “This here's Josey Pellerin over from Lafayette."
A couple of the guys said, Hey, and a couple of others introduced themselves, but Mike Morrissey, Mad Mike, who was in the seat next to mine, said, “Not the Josie? Of Josie and the Pussycats?"
The table had a laugh at that, but Pellerin didn't crack a smile. He took a chair across from Mike, lowering himself into it carefully, his arms shaking, and started stacking his chips. Muscular dystrophy, I thought. Some wasting disease. I pegged him for about my age, late thirties, and figured he would overplay his first good hand and soon be gone.
Mike, who likes to get under players’ skins, said, “Didn't I see you the other night hanging out with ‘A Boy Named Sue'?"
In a raspy, southern-fried voice, Pellerin said, “I've watched you on TV, Mister Morrissey. You're not as entertaining as you think, and you don't have that much game."
Mike pretended to shudder and that brought another laugh. “Let's see what you got, pal,” he said. “Then we can talk about my game."
Geneva, a good-looking woman even if she is mostly silicon and botox, washed a fresh deck, spreading the cards across the table, and shuffled them up.
The game was cash only, no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em. It was held in a side room of Harrah's New Orleans with a table ringed by nine barrel-backed chairs upholstered in red velvet and fake French Colonial stuff—fancy swords, paintings with gilt frames, and such—hanging on walls the color of cocktail sauce. G
eneva, who was a friend, let me sit in once in a while to help me maintain the widely held view that I was someone important, whereas I was, in actuality, a typical figment of the Quarter, a man with a few meaningful connections and three really good suits.
It wasn't unusual to have a couple of pros in the game, but the following week Harrah's was sponsoring a tournament with a million dollar first prize and a few big hitters had already filtered into town. Aside from Mad Mike, Avery Holt was at the table, Sammy Jawanda, Deng Ky (aka Denghis Khan), and Annie Marcus. The amateurs in the game were Pellerin, Jeremy LeGros, an investment banker with deep pockets, and myself, Jack Lamb.
Texas Hold ‘Em is easy to learn, but it will cost you to catch on to the finer points. To begin with, you're dealt two down cards, then you bet; then comes the flop, three up cards in the center of the table that belong to everyone. You bet some more. Then an up card that's called the turn and another round of betting. Then a final up card, the river, and more betting ... unless everyone has folded to the winner. I expected Pellerin to play tight, but five minutes hadn't passed before he came out firing and pushed in three thousand in chips. Le Gros and Mike went with him to the flop. King of hearts, trey of clubs, heart jack. Pellerin bet six thousand. LeGros folded and Mike peeked at his down cards.
“They didn't change on you, did they?” asked Pellerin.
Mike raised him four thousand. That told me Pellerin had gotten into his head. The smart play would have been either to call or to get super aggressive. A middling raise like four thousand suggested a lack of confidence. Of course with Mad Mike, you never knew when he was setting a trap. Pellerin pushed it again, raising ten K, not enough to make Mike bag the hand automatically. Mike called. The card on the turn was a three of hearts, pairing the board. Pellerin checked and Mike bet twenty.
“You must have yourself a hand,” said Pellerin. “But your two pair's not going to cut it. I'm all in."
Asimov's SF, April-May 2007 Page 27
