Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  Dark.

  Max scrabbled at the papers covering his face, pushing them away in mindless panic. Pain burned like fire down his left leg. He twisted trying to get away from the hurt. He reached with his hands, seeking the thing that held him, and brushed a smooth metal surface. Catching for breath he tried to calm himself. A desk. Amalia’s desk had fallen on him.

  “Amalia?”

  In the dark room, he could hear nothing. Outside, the wind pounded against the trailer, shaking it and howling to get in.

  “Amalia?” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “I’m here.”

  Relief poured through him, cooling his panic. “Are you okay?”

  It seemed like an eternity before she answered. “I don’t think so.”

  “What?” Panic returned like a fever. “What’s wrong?”

  “I landed on the window.”

  Window? Understanding hit him. It must have shattered under her. Into her. “Is it bad?”

  “Yes.”

  He twisted to see her, but the desk held him firmly in place. “The desk is on my leg.”

  “I thought it might be.” She was silent. How could she be so calm? He could imagine the furrow in her brow as she considered. “Will you be able to get the desk off?”

  He sat up. The movement sent lines of agony up his leg. Sweat beaded on his scalp.

  With his fingers under the lip of the desk, he pushed up. Pulled. Strained and twisted against the weight. It shifted slightly, grinding his bones together. At the pain, Max fell back. He lay panting, with his face in his hands. “I can’t.” Max wanted to cry but had no air in his lungs.

  “Thank you for trying.” She sounded as calm as if a fax had not come through.

  “I’m sorry.” He slammed his fist into the wall beneath him. “Amalia, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s alright. We couldn’t leave now anyway.”

  Again, he arched his neck in the direction of her voice, struggling to see her. “Why?”

  “The door is on this side.”

  Max cursed under his breath. The silence stretched between them. Outside, the howling seemed to double and treble, rising and falling like a tide of sound. He felt the tremors of wind through the wall under him. Something slapped rhythmically against the side of the trailer, like a tree-branch keeping time in the wind. He willed himself to remember seeing trees among the barren mounds of rocks. “How long will we have to wait till someone comes?”

  “After sunrise.” She paused. “Maybe later, with the clouds.”

  “But that’s not till ten.”

  She laughed, and then coughed wetly. “They’re afraid of the trolls.”

  The trailer shuddered again. The shriek of metal twisting resonated through the room. Wind suddenly stirred the papers next to him, brushing them with rain.

  “What was that?”

  Her voice floated in the dark as if it were attached to no one. “Will you feel safer if I tell you it’s the wind?”

  Originally published in Apex Magazine, April, 2007

  Evil Robot Monkey, by Mary Robinette Kowal

  Hugo Nomination for Best Short Story 2009

  Sliding his hands over the clay, Sly relished the moisture oozing around his fingers. The clay matted down the hair on the back of his hands making them look almost human. He turned the potter’s wheel with his prehensile feet as he shaped the vase. Pinching the clay between his fingers he lifted the wall of the vase, spinning it higher.

  Someone banged on the window of his pen. Sly jumped and then screamed as the vase collapsed under its own weight. He spun and hurled it at the picture window like feces. The clay spattered against the Plexiglas, sliding down the window.

  In the courtyard beyond the glass, a group of school kids leapt back, laughing. One of them swung his arms aping Sly crudely. Sly bared his teeth, knowing these people would take it as a grin, but he meant it as a threat. Swinging down from his stool, he crossed his room in three long strides and pressed his dirty hand against the window. Still grinning, he wrote SSA. Outside, the letters would be reversed.

  The student’s teacher flushed as red as a female in heat and called the children away from the window. She looked back once as she led them out of the courtyard, so Sly grabbed himself and showed her what he would do if she came into his pen.

  Her naked face turned brighter red and she hurried away. When they were gone, Sly rested his head against the glass. The metal in his skull thunked against the window. It wouldn’t be long now, before a handler came to talk to him.

  Damn.

  He just wanted to make pottery. He loped back to the wheel and sat down again with his back to the window. Kicking the wheel into movement, Sly dropped a new ball of clay in the center and tried to lose himself.

  In the corner of his vision, the door to his room snicked open. Sly let the wheel spin to a halt, crumpling the latest vase.

  Vern poked his head through. He signed, “You okay?”

  Sly shook his head emphatically and pointed at the window.

  “Sorry.” Vern’s hands danced. “We should have warned you that they were coming.”

  “You should have told them that I was not an animal.”

  Vern looked down in submission. “I did. They’re kids.”

  “And I’m a chimp. I know.” Sly buried his fingers in the clay to silence his thoughts.

  “It was Delilah. She thought you wouldn’t mind because the other chimps didn’t.”

  Sly scowled and yanked his hands free. “I’m not like the other chimps.” He pointed to the implant in his head. “Maybe Delilah should have one of these. Seems like she needs help thinking.”

  “I’m sorry.” Vern knelt in front of Sly, closer than anyone else would come when he wasn’t sedated. It would be so easy to reach out and snap his neck. “It was a lousy thing to do.”

  Sly pushed the clay around on the wheel. Vern was better than the others. He seemed to understand the hellish limbo where Sly lived–too smart to be with other chimps, but too much of an animal to be with humans. Vern was the one who had brought Sly the potter’s wheel which, by the Earth and Trees, Sly loved. Sly looked up and raised his eyebrows. “So what did they think of my show?”

  Vern covered his mouth, masking his smile. The man had manners. “The teacher was upset about the ‘evil robot monkey.’”

  Sly threw his head back and hooted. Served her right.

  “But Delilah thinks you should be disciplined.” Vern, still so close that Sly could reach out and break him, stayed very still. “She wants me to take the clay away since you used it for an anger display.”

  Sly’s lips drew back in a grimace built of anger and fear. Rage threatened to blind him, but he held on, clutching the wheel. If he lost it with Vern–rational thought danced out of his reach. Panting, he spun the wheel trying to push his anger into the clay.

  The wheel spun. Clay slid between his fingers. Soft. Firm and smooth. The smell of earth lived in his nostrils. He held the world in his hands. Turning, turning, the walls rose around a kernel of anger, subsuming it.

  His heart slowed with the wheel and Sly blinked, becoming aware again as if he were slipping out of sleep. The vase on the wheel still seemed to dance with life. Its walls held the shape of the world within them. He passed a finger across the rim.

  Vern’s eyes were moist. “Do you want me to put that in the kiln for you?”

  Sly nodded.

  “I have to take the clay. You understand that, don’t you.”

  Sly nodded again staring at his vase. It was beautiful.

  Vern scowled. “The woman makes me want to hurl feces.”

  Sly snorted at the image, then sobered. “How long before I get it back?”

  Vern picked up the bucket of clay next to the wheel. “I don’t know.” He stopped at the door and looked past Sly to the window. “I’m not cleaning your mess. Do you understand me?”

  For a moment, rage crawled on his spine, but Vern did not meet his eyes and kept
staring at the window. Sly turned.

  The vase he had thrown lay on the floor in a pile of clay.

  Clay.

  “I understand.” He waited until the door closed, then loped over and scooped the clay up. It was not much, but it was enough for now.

  Sly sat down at his wheel and began to turn.

  Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Mary Robinette Kowal

  The moment Tuyet walked into the Dagenais’s compartment, she knew something was different. The usual pack of dogs swarmed around her, distracting her, before she figured out that the compartment smelled different. Not bad–not like the times they had left everything piled in the sink for her as if they were having a contest to see who could goad the other into doing the dishes. Nor the time they’d fired the dog walker and didn’t bother to walk the hoard of dogs that Hélène kept. But they paid her to come once a week to wipe their counters, load the dishwasher and tidy the compartment. So she’d kept her head down, asked herself what Kant would have done, then said screw the philosophy and wiped up the dog shit and urine.

  Kant would not have done that.

  This time the compartment smelled good–like one of them had cooked instead of flashing dinners. More likely they’d added a chef to their list of status symbols. That had to be more impressive than a cleaner like her. If they’d been one of her students back at the university in Ho Chi Minh, she would have raised questions about Buddha and his teachings on wealth and living in the now.

  The dogs eddied around her, each begging to be petted. They understood Buddha. Poor things–did anyone pay attention to them?

  Cody Dagenais stepped around the corner in a towel, his blond hair slicked back with water. He jumped when he saw her. “Tuyet. I forgot today was your day.”

  She looked down, away from his perfect body, keeping her eyes low as befitted a servant. She needed this job in order to stay on Cordova Station–she kept Vien in the front of her thoughts, using the image of her son to push the sight of Cody’s sculpted abdomen away. “I’m sorry, sir. Do you want me to come back later?”

  “Um…no. No, this is fine.” He turned to the hall and hesitated. “Actually–I’ve got a client today. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Would it be too much trouble to come back? The vacuum, you know.”

  A client? When he was wearing nothing but a towel? Tuyet kept her face clear of her doubt. Hélène must be offstation. “It’s no problem. I could do everything except vacuum, if you’d like.” Vien had a doctor’s appointment tomorrow; she wasn’t sure how she’d fit a return trip in. “Would later tonight be all right?”

  “Sure. Say, how’s that son of yours doing?”

  Hélène would never have asked that–but then Cody had always been the nice one. Even if the tabloids said he had “married up” into the Dagenais fortune, his wife did not deserve him. “Vien was doing better right after your massage, but he’s had a bit of a setback. I’m sure he’ll pull out of it.” Her son had to hold on until she could afford a body harvester’s rates.

  “Maybe I should stop by more often, if the massages seem to help.” And right there, that showed what sort of man he was. Learning about Vien’s condition, he’d offered to give him a massage once a week and now–now to come more often…

  “Oh, we wouldn’t want to impose.”

  “Nonsense. He’s a good kid.” Cody knelt to fondle Missy, the keeshond. His towel fell open to show the inside of his strong thigh. “Listen, don’t tell Hélène– Do you want some veal? It’s prime grade organic. Hélène got it on her last trip earthside, for the dogs and cooked it once–she hates the smell and’ll throw it out. I hate to see it go to waste.”

  “I–” Tuyet did not know what to say. On the level where she lived with the other service staff, they got algae and simple processed foods. Only occasionally could she afford something fresh, something real; with the veal, she could make a decent bowl of phò for Vien. And yet, to accept food seemed like charity while the massages seemed like a kindness.

  Cody blanched at her hesitation. “I’m sorry. It’s not against your religion or anything is it? Or is it that I’m offering you dog food?” He swept a perfect hand through his hair. “I’m an idiot.”

  “No. No.” Tuyet gripped the handle of her cleaning bag for safety. “It’s a very kind offer.”

  “Great!” Cody stood, catching the towel before it slipped off of him. “It’s in the freezer. Just grab a couple of packets when you’re finished.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” He winked from the doorway. “It’s the least I can do. We work you too hard and, trust me, you will not enjoy scrubbing down the kitchen. Hélène…” He shook his head. “I wish I could keep her out of the kitchen.”

  #

  Tuyet grimaced as she scrubbed the dried blood on stainless steel counter. Stainless, ha! Cody had not been kidding about the kitchen. Not that she minded having a paycheck, but they could have used a cleaning bot, just this once.

  But that would ruin using her as a status symbol and Hélène wouldn’t stand for that. She had embraced the New Primitive movement with the rest of the fashionable set. Everything in the compartment that could be done by hand, was–but not by Hélène. She wouldn’t take a chance on spoiling her nails.

  Tuyet re-wet her sponge, watching the water carry a pink stream down the recycler like a pallid rendition of the spill. Placing the sponge back over the dried puddle, she leaned into it, trying to force the stain up. She muttered one of Pierce’s maxims of pragmatism while she worked, “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.” The stain’s effect, she reflected, was ultimately to buy Vien a new set of lungs because without it, she would not have a job and without a job, she would not have the right to stay on Cordova station. This was the only place that had the possibility of healing her son. So therefore–she wiped the counter clean–she blessed and thanked the stain for existing.

  Dotty gnawed a bone in the corner.

  “Shoo, dog.” She shook her head at the Dalmatian and turned her attention to the retro-trendy linoleum floor. It was covered with dog prints, pieces of smashed bell pepper, and today, tiny polka-dots of grease and blood. You’d think they had kids, the way the floors looked. Tuyet went to the closet for the mop and bucket, counting her blessings that Hélène wasn’t home today.

  As nice as Cody was, she hated the days that they were both home, bickering with each other about stupid things like who had fed the dogs, or who had lost the remote. How such a tiny woman could be such a giant bitch was beyond understanding. There were days when Tuyet wanted to turn her over her knee for a spanking.

  Tuyet stared in the closet stupidly. The mop was where it was supposed to be, but not the bucket. They couldn’t have cleaned something, could they? Leaning the mop against the counter, the sink tempted her as an alternate mop basin, but if Hélène came home before Tuyet had finished, there would be shrieks and cries of contamination and tomorrow there might not be a job. And that was not an effect she wanted from the missing bucket.

  She knelt, scrubbing the linoleum with the sponge and thanking the station’s architect for the hard varnish on the floor. In places, she used her thumbnail to pop spots off the floor. The perfect French manicured hands of Hélène would never stoop to a task like this. The whole thing was probably one more bizarre territory dispute between the two. Some people would be better off divorcing.

  #

  Tuyet had splurged on some onions on the way back to the efficiency compartment she shared with Vien. Cutting a slice off the ginger root she grew in a pot of sand over the sink, Tuyet glanced at her son. Vien slept on his cot, laboring to breathe even at rest. He was tall for his age, but had lost so much weight since the Stevens-Johnson syndrome had destroyed most of the mucous membranes in his body that he looked like a stalk of dessicated bamboo. State health care had not been able to do mor
e than keep him from dying.

  She put the onion and ginger over the electric burner, wishing that open flame were allowed in space. The electric burner never charred the onion quite right. She shrugged–she was making the phò with veal, it wasn’t as if it were going to be perfect anyway, but it would beat another dish of cultured algae.

  As the rich caramel smell of the charring onion permeated the corners of the compartment, Vien twitched and opened his eyes. Lifting a corner of his oxygen mask he tried to sniff the air. “Are you making phò?”

  She nodded. “Cody had some extra veal. I’m sorry it’s not beef.”

  “When did you see him?

  Tuyet busied herself with filling a pot of water for the broth. “At the market after I finished at the university.”

  “Oh.” Vien accepted her lie without hesitation. “I like him.”

  “I do too, Cabbage.” If Cody weren’t tied to Hélène she might have entertained thoughts. Who was she kidding? She did entertain thoughts.

  Tuyet opened the white paper packet of veal and sighed with pleasure at its marbled surface. Such a nice man. She sliced off a piece to make the broth, saving the rest to go with the noodles. While the soup simmered, she helped Vien into his wheelchair. His black hair stuck out in a dry halo around his ears. If she touched him, he might crumble. “Have you talked to Dad today?”

  He nodded and adjusted his oxygen mask. “I told him I was bored. He said I should go to class with you.”

  Not for the first time, Tuyet wished that she were not carrying this lie about her job, but Vien had been so upset at the thought of her cleaning compartments that she had lied to him. Her ex-husband prided himself on never lying, so she had been forced to lie to him as well to maintain the fiction. He would not have been so cavalier with his truths if he could see Vien turn blue as his scarred airways closed when he cried.

  Tuyet tucked a blanket around Vien’s withered legs. “Well, I’ll see if we can find something fun to do. Do you want to help me make the phò?”