2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

  “I thought it would look robotic.” Greger pulled his knees to his chest. “The doctors told me I broke two ribs and had a collapsed lung. That would cost a lot to treat, wouldn’t you think? But they said the bill was paid for. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

  Valentin suppressed a smile. He reached into his coat for some documents and placed them on the bed.

  Greger’s eyes widened. “Citizenship papers? How?”

  “Money in the right hands will buy anything.”

  “And this?” Greger pointed to a string of numbers Valentin had written in the corner.

  “Bank account number. It’s in your mother’s name, since you’re too young. After you receive cards for you and your family, you should visit the recruiting station in the lower district. They’re expecting you.”

  “Expecting me for what?”

  “Training. As a firewatcher or rat catcher, or something safer if you prefer. But I don’t think safe is in your blood.” He drew his gun and set it atop the papers. “In which case, you’ll need this.”

  “I can’t take your gun.”

  Valentin stood, leaning on his cane. His surgeon had said he would not need extra support once his body adjusted to the new limb. But for now, the cane illustrated how incapable he was of using the weapon.

  “I’m retired. Tomorrow I’m catching a transport off-world to do some traveling.”

  Left unsaid was that he had to leave before the Council thought to give his credit account a closer look. They did not take well to theft, which was the charge Valentin would face if the origin of his newfound wealth was investigated.

  Unlike him, Greger should face no problems with his share of the money. The Council had no record of his finances. For all they knew, his family had always been rich.

  “If there’s anything I can do…” Greger said.

  “Take care of your family. Don’t leave them or forget where you came from. Don’t make my mistakes.” He limped toward the door.

  “Valentin?”

  He looked back.

  Greger peered at the gun’s display screen. “The shot counter says zero. That’s impossible. It means in all your years on the force, you never pulled the trigger.”

  “And?”

  “You said that day you would shoot me.”

  “Maybe I would have, if you had kept running. But you stopped. Everyone did, and I always made the takedown. That’s why I was one of the best.”

  He winked at the astonished boy and limped from the room.

  David Carani became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of “The Paradise Aperture” in Writers of the Future, Vol. XXVIII (2012), edited by K.D. Wentworth.

  Visit his website at www.davidcarani.com.

  * * *

  Short Story: “The Paradise Aperture”

  THE PARADISE APERTURE

  by David Carani

  First published in Writers of the Future, Vol. XXVIII (2012), edited by K.D. Wentworth

  • • • •

  IEYED THE DOOR with distrust. The shocking blue was brighter than I usually photographed, but maybe that was where I’d been going wrong. Marie had always loved vibrant colors. If she was behind any door, it would be one like this.

  Two years ago, I’d barely left the Midwest, let alone the country. Yet here I was, halfway across the world, standing in the long-dead garden of an abandoned house in Tunisia.

  The town of Sidi Bou Said spread along the sparkling Mediterranean below, stark white buildings accented in bold strokes of blue. Once, I would have been entranced by the breathtaking vista. Now it just looked tired and dusty.

  I turned back to the door. Set in white stone and arched at the top, it had been intricately inked in swirling black dots reminiscent of henna. I rested my hand on the rough wood and closed my eyes. It didn’t feel any different than a normal door, but then, they never did.

  I shook my head, halting my admiration. I couldn’t be sidetracked. The mystical blue doors had drawn me here, but ultimately they were just a means to an end.

  “We waitin’ for something, Jonny?”

  The voice belonged to my daughter, Irene. One hand on her hip, she watched me with a tapping foot, occasionally blowing swooped bangs from her eyes. She had Marie’s hair, a fire-engine red that looked fake but wasn’t. Unlike her mother, Irene kept it short—like her temper.

  “The sun needs to be at the right angle,” I said patiently, wishing again she wouldn’t call me Jonny. Usually I ignored her when she called me by my first name, but if I did that all the time, we’d never talk. The girl sure could be persistent.

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  I laughed. If she only knew the dozens of letters I got everyday asking that same question. I guess you might say it was a gift, but too often, it felt like a curse.

  “For one thing, I watch my language,” I said.

  “Seriously.”

  “Gut feeling,” I said, shrugging. “I just know.”

  Irene wrinkled her nose and folded her arms across her chest, but said nothing. She played tough, but I knew the tribal tattoo down her left arm was a five-year temp and that she hated the onyx stud in her nose more than she hated her ex-boyfriend.

  A cool breeze rose off the bay, stealing a moment of heat and bringing sounds of the festival from the streets down the way. Ankle-deep in twisted weeds, I wiped sweat from my forehead and forced a clearing for the tripod.

  “Hand me the Deltex,” I said.

  Irene stared at me blankly.

  “The gray camera case.”

  With the gracelessness of inattentive youth, she fumbled with the case slung behind her back, unzipping it with one hand and peeling out the camera. I fought the urge to cringe, even when she tossed the camera instead of walking the two steps to hand it to me. Five-thousand dollars of hardware whirled through the air, but it wasn’t the first time this had happened. I caught it easily.

  “What have we said about throwing things?”

  “Easy, Pops. You caught it fine. What’s the big deal?”

  Honestly, with money no longer an issue and three backups over her shoulder, it wasn’t a big deal. Not in the mood for a fight, I almost let it go. Almost.

  “The big deal,” I said, very calmly, “is you need to learn respect for people’s things.”

  “Not like you can’t just—”

  “It doesn’t matter how many cameras I can afford,” I said, anticipating her biggest argument. “It’s a matter of principle.”

  “Principles suck.”

  I grinned. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  She stuck out her tongue, but didn’t argue back. She knew I was right and, with Irene, that was as good as a victory.

  I squinted up at the sun, a searing white orb in the empty sky. It still didn’t feel right, but I set up the camera anyway, careful to frame the door with enough stone. Any cropping would destroy the image, so the proportions had to be perfect. If they weren’t, the door would never open and I’d be left with a very expensive, very useless life-size photo.

  I couldn’t take that chance. Once I captured a door, it couldn’t be recaptured no matter how identical the image. I’d found that out the hard way with a few photos, but I tried not to think about them. Surely Marie wouldn’t have been behind those doors. They’d been so unexciting.

  “Why are we all the way up here?” Irene asked. “We’re missing the festival.”

  “We’re not here for the festival,” I said, adjusting the shutter speed for a longer exposure. “And I can’t risk some clumsy tourist ruining the picture.”

  “What’s so special about these doors?”

  I looked up from the viewfinder. “You got a lot of questions today,” I said. “Something on your mind?”

  Irene’s head dropped and her shoulders sagged. Suddenly she was far younger and more vulnerable than eighteen already was.

  “You really think Mom’s still out there?” sh
e asked.

  “I can’t believe anything else,” I said. God knows I’m not the same man without her.

  “Nana thinks you’re cracked. She didn’t want me to come.”

  I grunted. My mother-in-law hadn’t spoken with me since we’d lost Marie. I couldn’t really blame her. If it wasn’t for my photos, Marie might still be here.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  She bit her lip, hesitating. “I think… I think we’ll find her.”

  I nodded. “Then don’t ever let that go—no matter what anyone says. We’ll get her back, Reenie. I promise.”

  Irene seemed to relax. She even smiled, which was not something I was blessed with often.

  “I saw a yellow door on our way up here,” she said.

  A yellow door in a town of blue and white?

  “Sounds like we’ve got one more stop after this,” I said. “Nice catch.”

  The sun finally where I wanted it, I looked through the viewfinder, exhaled slowly, and took the shot.

  • • •

  Several weeks and a hundred photos later, we stood in Heathrow Airport, the ebb and flow of thousands of strangers bubbling around us. Crowds had never bothered me before, but it was different now that so many of them seemed to recognize me.

  Irene leaned against a pillar, eyes closed, bobbing to the music from her oversized headphones. I still don’t know why I agreed to bring her along. At times, it seemed like she didn’t even want to be along. But I knew how helpless she must feel. She wanted her mother back as much as I wanted my wife.

  A bald man in a business suit and overcoat wandered over, glancing at me over his newspaper. I nervously checked my watch. The only thing I hated more than flying was waiting to fly.

  The bald man made up his mind and moved toward me. I sighed internally. Here we go.

  “You’re that guy, aren’t you?”

  I pretended not to hear, positioning myself between the man and Irene. Sometimes these guys turned out to be real head cases.

  He edged closer and tapped my shoulder, ignoring all concepts of personal space.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen you on the news,” he said, jabbing his finger at me. “You’re that photographer.”

  “You must have me confused—”

  “What do you call those pictures you take?” he asked. “Reclusive doors?”

  I gritted my teeth. He obviously wasn’t going to leave me alone. Did they ever?

  “Recursion doors,” I corrected, checking my watch again. Boarding time was two minutes late.

  “Yeah, that’s it. World within a world or something, right?”

  “Now boarding first class,” the flight attendant announced.

  Finally.

  “Something like that,” I said, nudging Irene and eagerly pushing forward to hand over our tickets. A few people glared at me, but I ignored them.

  The man persisted, grabbing my sleeve. I turned to say something, but stopped. The man’s breathing was heavy, his eyes bulging. I’d seen that look of fanaticism before.

  “Is it true what they say?” the man asked in a fierce whisper. “Did you really discover paradise?”

  The color drained from my face. Had the idea already come so far? It was like a virus I never meant to spread. I pulled my arm away and retreated down the ramp without answering.

  How could I?

  • • •

  I slept for two days after returning home. The endless rounds of travel were definitely taking their toll, but it didn’t matter—pure exhaustion was the only way I slept these days. On the third day, Irene unceremoniously woke me.

  “Jonny!”

  She stood by my bed, snapping her fingers and pointing at the phone in her hand. I stared at her in the confusion of the half-awake.

  “It’s Nana.”

  I let my head fall back to the pillow. Why now?

  Irene put the phone in my hand and I lifted it to my ear.

  “Hello, Margaret.”

  “It’s time to put an end to this nonsense, Jonathan,” my mother-in-law said.

  “Good morning to you too.”

  “I’ve humored you long enough. It was one thing when your actions affected only you. Now you’re bringing your teenage daughter along?”

  “It’s her decision.”

  She gave an exasperated sigh. “We’ve all accepted it. Why can’t you?”

  “Because I haven’t given up hope,” I said, sitting up. “I just have to find the right door.”

  “Damn it, Jonathan. The fire was two years ago,” she said. “You have to let it go. The door is gone.”

  I was silent.

  “Your daughter needs you,” she said. “And she needs the chance to move on.”

  “You want me to tell Irene her mother is dead?”

  “I want you to be her father.”

  “What happened to you?”

  Her voice softened. “I’m tired, Jonathan. For the longest time I wanted to believe you were right. But I can’t anymore—it’s just too hard. I’m too old for false hope.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “We’ll talk again soon. Goodbye, Margaret.”

  I hung up without waiting for an answer. My hands were trembling. I balled them into tight fists and pressed them against my forehead. Everyone thought I was crazy. What was so crazy about wanting to believe your wife was still alive?

  The day I lost Marie, I’d come home to our little apartment over the antique shop and found it ablaze. A caravan of fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances had blockaded the collapsing building, a crowd of onlookers gawking into the flames with mixed looks of wonder and horror.

  I’d screamed and twisted and torn at the firefighters like a madman, but they’d held me back, told me the building was empty. They hadn’t understood that the building could appear empty, when it was not. They couldn’t have known that while they’d held me down, my wife had been inside.

  Maybe I was crazy, but I knew one thing: Marie was alive. The door to our world was gone, but I would find another way in. I had to.

  • • •

  Around noon, I dragged myself from bed and returned to the office. An unmarked stone building along the Chicago North Shore, it had a second floor showroom, a first floor jammed with massive industrial printers, and a basement full of discarded attempts to find my wife.

  Someone had stuck a sign to the front door, imploring me to repent of my evil ways. Needless to say, not everyone thought highly of my gift. I pulled the sign down, wondering again what good it did to have an unmarked building when everyone already knew where you were.

  I fumbled with my keys a moment, before realizing there was no longer a keyhole in the door. I frowned at the keypad on the wall. Kensuke, my curator, had recently convinced me to upgrade the security system. It made sense, considering the inventory in my basement was valued in the billions; I just hadn’t ever used it. When had he found time to get it installed?

  I scratched the back of my head and stared into the surveillance camera, struggling to recall the eight-digit passcode. It was probably so obvious I’d never remember it. I threw up my hands in exasperation, suddenly regretting I’d asked Kensuke to leave off the buzzer.

  “Might I have a word, Mr. Ward?”

  I sighed and turned around. The man had the distinct look of a weasel in a suit, which was disappointingly unoriginal. His peppered hair was receding, the little he had left slicked back in greasy curls.

  Couldn’t these people stick to the phone, instead of ambushing me at my front door? At least the phone I could ignore.

  “What is it this time?”

  “I represent Renkoda Pharmaceuticals,” the representative said. He straightened his tie and flashed a smirk that turned my stomach. “We are the world’s largest—”

  “I know who you are,” I said, waving a hand. Everyone knew Renkoda. They had their claws in a lot more than pharmaceuticals. “What do you want?”

  “I have been authorized to extend you an
exclusive offer to work for our company.”

  “Exclusive offer to work or offer to work exclusively?”

  The man pursed his lips, pressing them together in a flat line. “The latter,” he said.

  “Let me make this easy for you,” I said. “Not interested.”

  The representative seemed taken aback. Obviously, he wasn’t used to being turned down.

  “You haven’t even… what about the offer?” he said. “You haven’t heard the offer.”

  Maybe I was being reckless. Why shouldn’t I work for a powerful company like Renkoda? I’d already sold myself out to the world’s so-called elite. How would this be any different?

  And yet… it was different. I might sell to the elite, but never for them. I did this for Marie and no one else. It was a thin line, but one that kept me sane.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I forgot to wait for that part. How about this? You write the number on a piece of paper and I’ll take a look.”

  While the representative fumbled in his briefcase for a pen, I turned back to the keypad with a flash of insight and punched in the eight digits. The door unlocked with a click and I briskly stepped through, swiping it closed behind me. I left courtesy behind a long time ago.

  A hand scanner awaited me in the foyer, one security measure even I couldn’t screw up. I took the stairs to the showroom floor, expecting to find Kensuke preparing for an auction. The room was empty, but a selection of framed recursion doors had been brought up from the basement and propped in the corner.

  Shaped like a square donut, the room was surrounded on three walls with tall multi-paned windows. The cube in the center of the room was for display, four doors to a wall.

  A single recursion door hung on the wall in front of me. It was a relatively unassuming door, weatherworn wood bordered in faded brick and overgrown ivy. Kensuke had matched it with a simple, antique-finish frame.

  I pressed my hand against the picture, feeling not the smooth photo paper, but the ancient wood of the garden door beyond. I lowered my hand to the cold iron handle and pushed. The door creaked painfully as it swung open, revealing the pocket world beyond. No matter how many times I opened the doors, it always caught me a little off guard.