The lights went on.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get air into my lungs, couldn’t breathe … then I could, in a great gasp, and my lungs were on fire, burning like the hell I didn’t believe in … help me, Col…
Darkness.
Randall swam into view above my bed. It hurt to look at him. It hurt to breathe him in, to breathe anything in.
“Don’t talk, Celia. You’re going to be all right. It will take a while for the burns on the esophagus to heal, but they will heal, I promise you.”
“I’ll be so good you won’t know me! I promise you!”
I croaked, “Sally?”
I had never seen his smooth diplomatic face look so grim. “Yes, she did it. She—”
“See … her?”
“She’s in custody, waiting deportation.”
“See … her!”
“No.”
“Vid …” God, he better stop making me talk!
“All right,” he said grudgingly. “That’s some niece you’ve got there. You have no idea how upset the Visitors were. The only reason the whole dance program didn’t end right there, with ripple-effect consequences throughout the entire range of human-Visitor relations, is those kids’ affection for you.”
Affection? For me?
Ten minutes later Sally’s face appeared on an interactive cube ponderously wheeled to my bedside by a disapproving medtech. Sally looked terrible. Her face had bloated from crying, her nose was red and raw, and words tumbled from her like a falling building.
“Aunt Celia, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to injure you, I never thought you’d go on stage, it was just supposed to be a stupid prank. Oh, God, you’re the only one who’s ever cared what I did—”
I had a sudden insight, completely unlike me. This was a rare moment. Sally was completely vulnerable, as I’d never seen her before and would probably never see her again, and she would answer truthfully whatever I asked her. Provided I asked her quick.
“Sally … why?” The words hurt my burned esophagus.
“You paid all that attention to them! I was … I was …”
Jealous. She was jealous.
“… but I never thought anyone would get hurt, not even them! I never thought I could hurt anything!”
And there it was. She never thought she’d have any real impact. Just as she’d never had any true, deep effect on my workaholic brother, or on her selfish mother, or even on me. Yes, I cared what she did, but not as much as I cared about ballet. I wasn’t going to apologize for that, though… I couldn’t apologize for it. Ballet had been my life, was my life, gave my life shape and meaning. Even if that shape now had six arms instead of two and bouréed forward on suckers. It was still ballet, and it still made its exquisite impact. I’d just seen that.
But this child … she didn’t believe she’d ever had any real impact on anything, or anyone. Until now.
“Sally,” I croaked, “you did … very bad. Might … wreck … all human-Mollie … relations …”
She looked scared, and horrified, and impressed. “Really?”
“You … must …” I couldn’t get any more words out. One last huge effort. “Make … right …”
“How?”
I shook my head and cut off the link. Then I pressed the button for Randall.
He arrived quickly, but I couldn’t talk anymore. I made him sit me up and get me a handheld. Everything in my body hurt. Nonetheless, I keyed in:
… Tell Sally she nearly ruined all alien contact for good. Make this very important. Very! Let her think everything hinges on her apology, let her make it, and get her a community service job on Earth with kids who really need her…
He snapped, “I’m not running a juvenile rehabilitation program, Celia!”
I glared at him and picked up the handheld again.
… Do it, or I quit as dance instructor …
Then I fell back on my pillows and closed my eyes, the exhausted dictator.
Would it work for Sally? I didn’t know. We don’t pick the things that define us—they pick us, which is a fucking random arrangement. But having an impact on something … yes. Even a negative impact was better than none. And a positive impact, however weird …
Yes.
When I had rested a bit, I’d call Randall again. I had to tell him he needed to reschedule my ballet students’ recital of Afternoon of a Faun.
* * *
Nancy Kress is the author of twenty books: twelve novels of science fiction or fantasy, one YA novel, two thrillers, three story collections, and two books on writing. Her most recent book is Probability Space, the conclusion of a trilogy that began with Probability Moon and Probability Sun. The trilogy concerns quantum physics, a space war, and the nature of reality. Kress’ short fiction has won her three Nebulas and a Hugo. Her work has been translated into fourteen languages, including Croatian and Hebrew. She writes a monthly “Fiction” column for Writer’s Digest magazine, and lives in Maryland.
THE SIREN STONE
by Derwin Mak
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COLONEL Matthew Chang sat aboard the spaceship Long Island and stared at the sensor map, which showed asteroid 20 521 Odette de Proust flying steadily toward Space Station Reagan—and the two hundred and ninety people he’d had to leave there.
A video transmission from General Boyd on Olympus appeared on a monitor.
“Colonel,” said Boyd, “all our fleet—what’s left after the Mars disaster—is still carrying refugees away from Olympus. The soonest any ship can get to Space Station Reagan is seven weeks.”
“Odette will hit Reagan in six,” said Chang plainly.
“Are you confident the demolition crew will blow up the asteroid well before that?” Boyd asked.
Chang shook his head. “They’re still behind schedule. Two days now. Something’s wrong.” In the asteroid demolition business, rock blasters did not linger on an asteroid by choice. If they were late, they had run into trouble. A failed bomb, a premature explosion, a crashed ship, a collision with another asteroid, an injured crew … there were endless possibilities of how the mission could fail.
But these problems occurred on asteroids that wobbled erratically in orbits crowded with other rocks. They seldom occurred on asteroids like Odette, rocks that rotated smoothly in orbits with few neighbors.
“Rock Blasters, Inc., are the best in the business,” said Boyd. “But if they’ve failed, you and the Long Island must be in position to blow up the asteroid.”
“I should be evacuating the station. It’s not worth risking anyone—” Chang protested. “We’re not the experts—”
“I’ll take full responsibility. I’ve put the order in writing,” said Boyd. “Remember, the Long Island holds only ten people. Time isn’t on your side—to save the personnel or the station itself. That’s why I’m sending you to make sure that asteroid is destroyed. It’s the only way to save all three hundred people.”
After Boyd’s transmission ended, Chang muttered, “We should’ve blown up Odette years ago. Those stupid civil servants don’t take anything seriously until it becomes a crisis.”
A lieutenant turned to Chang. “Sir,” said the lieutenant, “we’ve reestablished contact with the Rocky Road.”
“Finally,” said Chang. “What’s going on now?”
�
�The crew is still acting crazy. They insist there are people living on the asteroid.”
“Impossible,” Chang growled. “How can anyone live on an airless rock?”
The lieutenant pointed at a monitor. “We’re getting a transmission from the blasters now, sir.”
On the monitor, the image of Andrew Lundman appeared, beamed from his ship the Rocky Road, now on Odette.
“Lundman, when are you going to blow up that rock?” said Chang.
“Not while there are people here,” said Andrew.
For Andrew Lundman, owner of Rock Blasters, Inc., and captain of the Rocky Road, the project had seemed clear and simple: land on Odette, bore a hole into its core, plant a couple of nuclear bombs, leave, and detonate the bombs. Odette would break into pieces of varied trajectories instead of slamming into Space Station Reagan six weeks from now.
Scavengers would follow to pick up the chunks of iron ore and pay a commission of five million gold units to Rock Blasters, Inc. Along with the twenty million gold units for blowing up the asteroid, Rock Blasters, Inc., would make a good profit.
20 521 Odette de Proust, named after a character from the novel Swann’s Way and the novelist who created her, should have been a routine assignment. Odette was small and deemed safe enough that the United Nations Committee on Asteroid and Meteor Collisions had simply outsourced the job to Rock Blasters, Inc.
On schedule, Andrew Lundman, George Hodding, and Ed Benton had landed on Odette without problems. Just another asteroid demolition. Or so they’d thought.
The first ghost had appeared when they were drilling into the asteroid. Andrew remembered the moment in every detail. They all did.
“Oh, God, look over there!” George shouted.
Ed gasped and pointed at the figure. “What’s that?”
“Then you see her, too?” demanded George.
Andrew turned off the drill. “I see it, too,” he said. “What is it? An alien?”
“No, it’s Rachel,” said George, both mystified and excited. “Rachel, my wife.”
As he watched the figure walk closer, George muttered, “Rachel, Rachel. But Rachel is dead.”
Andrew turned and stared straight at her so that his helmet camera would capture her image. “Reagan Mission Control, there’s another person on the asteroid. I’m aiming my helmet camera at her. Do you see her?”
“Negative, Lundman,” Mission Control replied warily from Space Station Reagan. “We don’t see any person other than you and your crew.”
George began walking toward Rachel. As he passed by, Andrew saw the dumbfounded look on George’s face and the hesitant way he approached Rachel.
Mission Control addressed George: “Mr. Hodding, why are you moving away from the drill operation?”
“Investigating an anomaly,” said George as he approached Rachel, who was now smiling.
Rachel put her arms around him. “Oh, George, it’s been too long,” she cooed. “Don’t look so shocked. Look happy.”
“Rachel, how—how on Earth did you get here?” George blurted.
“We’re not on Earth,” Rachel reminded him. “Just hold me for a little while.”
Over his helmet radio, Andrew heard George and Rachel talk. “Mission Control, Hodding is talking to his wife. Do you hear them?” he asked.
“Negative on that. We hear Hodding talking to someone, but we don’t hear anyone talking back to him,” said Mission Control. “What’s going on over there?”
Even if she were alive, she should have been dead because she had no space suit and no air. Instead of any protection from the cold and vacuum of space, she wore a red jacket, a short black dress, and high heels. It was the outfit she had worn on their first date twenty years ago.
She also looked as young as she had been on their first date. Behind her, the stars shone like bright white pinpricks against the black fabric of space. The searchlight from the Rocky Road lit half her face, leaving the other half in shadow.
“George, it’s so wonderful to see you again,” she repeated.
George shook his head. How could she talk through the vacuum of space, and how could he hear her voice on his helmet radio? How could her wavy black hair blow in a wind that couldn’t exist?
“Rachel, is it really you?”
Rachel smiled. “In the flesh.”
George reached out and touched her again. She was solid.
“How can you stand there without a space suit, how can you talk to me?”
Rachel shrugged. “I don’t know. I was suddenly here. I don’t know how I got here or how I can live here.”
She swung her arms around and danced. “But I feel so alive!”
Even though you died seven years ago, remembered George.
“George, how is Megan?” she asked.
“Megan’s well. She turned fifteen a month ago. Listens to those Euro-rock groups. She got an A in English. Her teachers like her …” he rambled.
Rachel squealed. “Oh, how I wish I could see her grow up! And how about Crystal?”
George smiled. “She’s well, too. Crystal’s an athlete, pretty good for a twelve-year-old. Came in second at a school track and field meet. She got a blue ribbon.”
Rachel pointed at the Rocky Road. “Can we go inside the ship? Did you bring photos of the girls? I want to see them!”
As they walked to the ship, George wondered how he would tell his wife’s ghost that he had betrayed her.
Ed’s father, who had died of lung cancer five years ago, appeared next. Ed had seen photos of his dad’s last days, when he looked scrawny and wasted by disease inside an ill-fitting green hospital gown. But here on Odette, he looked healthy and fit, as he was in Ed’s childhood, and wore his favorite red plaid shirt and blue jeans.
Ed walked slowly, cautiously, to his dad. Ed felt his throat go dry with fear and surprise, but he managed to talk.
“Dad, how did you get here?” Ed asked.
“I dunno. Suddenly appeared here. Glad I’m alive again, though.”
“So you know—you know that you’re—dead?” Ed asked.
His dad threw a pebble. It soared silently through the beam of light from Ed’s flashlight and into the black depths of space.
Dad nodded. “Yeah, I know I’m supposed to be dead. I don’t know how or why I’m here with you.”
The final ghost to appear to the rock blasters was Sally, Andrew’s sweetheart at the University of Oregon. She had died when terrorists bombed her train in their last year at university. Yet on Odette, Sally was alive and well, as young as she had been in her senior year, wearing the white, green, and yellow uniform of a University of Oregon cheerleader.
“Go, Ducks!” she yelled, referring to the University of Oregon’s football team. After dropping her pom-poms to the ground, she jumped into a pike, kicking her legs up parallel to the ground and bending at the waist to touch her toes. When she landed in front of Andrew, a small cloud of rock dust rose from her feet.
With a gasp, Andrew stumbled and fell backward onto the ground. Up and down his spine, he felt both the heat of shock and the cold of fear. As he looked up at Sally, he saw and heard her laugh.
“Klutzy, just like at the spring dance! You haven’t changed a bit!” she teased him. She bent and reached down to help him get up on his feet. He felt her solid hands grab his arm.
“Hey, Andy, let’s go into the ship,” she suggested. “You can take your space suit off in there. You’ll be more comfortable. Yeah.” She smiled. “Why don’t you take some clothes off?”
Back aboard the Rocky Road, Andrew took off his space suit and led Sally to the control room. Used to a mere three-man crew, Andrew suddenly felt crowded in the control room, with George and Rachel holding hands in one corner, Ed and his dad huddled over a monitor at another area, and now he and Sally walking into the room.
Andrew had never seen George’s green eyes so happy and bright as now, as Rachel ran her hands through his brown hair. Andrew also noticed that Ed’s blond hair
was thinning in the same spot, at the back of his head, where his dad had gone bald.
He turned around and saw Sally put her pom-poms down beside a computer console. As she sat down in a chair and stretched, he noticed how lifelike these ghosts were. Unlike the transparent spirits of horror movies and stories, these looked opaque and felt solid.
He saw his reflection in a shiny metal control console. Gray hair, induced by time and hard living. He’d aged so much since Sally died. What a contrast with her ghost’s hair, still as blonde and shiny as it had been in college.
“How can you exist?” Andrew demanded. “Without air? Without food? Without, uh—”
“Without life?” said Sally. “Yes, I know I’m supposed to be dead. I don’t know how I got here. Buy why does it matter? We can just pick up where we left off.” She rose from the chair, put her arms around Andrew’s shoulders, pulled his lips toward hers, and kissed him. It was a deep, wet kiss, full of love and longing and hunger.
Andrew gripped her and returned the kiss. Her skin felt warm and soft and smelled of the lilac perfume she had worn on their last date, two weeks before she died.
On Space Station Reagan, Mission Control still could not see Sally, Rachel, or Ed’s dad through the Rocky Road’s cameras, nor could Mission Control hear the ghosts’ voices. After Mission Control and Andrew had argued for hours, Colonel Chang, the station’s commander was called in. Like his staff, the colonel could not see the ghosts either.
“All I see are you, Hodding, and Benton,” said Chang. “I can’t see anyone else.”
“How can you not see them? They’re right here beside us,” said Andrew. He turned to Sally. “Sally, say something to the colonel.”
“I can’t explain this, sir, but I am here,” said Sally.
Chang said nothing. Hadn’t he heard Sally? Andrew wondered.
Finally, Chang spoke. “Lundman, who were you talking to a minute ago?”
“Sally,” said Andrew. “Didn’t you hear her?”
“Hear who?” Chang asked. “I heard nobody.”
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