Her face was like stone. “I'm what I am. An Irishwoman. A musician. A patriot. Cooze for an American playboy."
I kept my smile, though I felt as if she'd slapped me. “That's unfair."
It's an evil thing to have a naked woman look at you the way Mary did me. “Is it? Are you not abandoning your planet in two days? Maybe you're thinking of taking me along. Tell me, exactly how does that work?"
I reached for the whiskey bottle on the table by the bed. We'd drunk it almost empty, but there was still a little left. “If we're not close, then how is that my fault? You've known from the start that I'm mad about you. But you won't even—oh, fuck it!” I drained the bottle. “Just what the hell do you want from me? Tell me! I don't think you can."
Mary grabbed me angrily by the arms and I dropped the bottle and broke her hold and seized her by the wrists. She bit my shoulder so hard it bled and when I tried to push her away, toppled me over on my back and clambered up on top of me.
We did not so much resolve our argument as fuck it into oblivion.
It took me forever to fall asleep that night. Not Mary. She simply decided to sleep and sleep came at her bidding. I, however, sat up for hours staring at her face in the moonlight. It was all hard planes and determination. A strong face but not one given to compromise. I'd definitely fallen in love with the wrong woman. Worse, I was leaving for distant worlds the day after tomorrow. All my life had been shaped toward that end. I had no Plan B.
In the little time I had left, I could never sort out my feelings for Mary, much less hers for me. I loved her, of course, that went without saying. But I hated her bullying ways, her hectoring manner of speech, her arrogant assurance that I would do whatever she wanted me to do. Much as I desired her, I wanted nothing more than to never see her again. I had all the wealth and wonders of the universe ahead of me. My future was guaranteed.
And, God help me, if she'd only asked me to stay, I would have thrown it all away for her in an instant.
* * * *
In the morning, we took a hyperrapid to Galway and toured its vitrified ruins. “Resistance was stiffest in the West,” Mary said. “One by one all the nations of the Earth sued for peace, and even in Dublin there was talk of accommodation. Yet we fought on. So the Outsiders hung a warship in geostationary orbit and turned their strange weapons on us. This beautiful port city was turned to glass. The ships were blown against the shore and broke on the cobbles. The cathedral collapsed under its own weight. Nobody has lived here since."
The rain spattered to a stop and there was a brief respite from the squalls which in that part of the country come off the Atlantic in waves. The sun dazzled from a hundred crystalline planes. The sudden silence was like a heavy hand laid unexpectedly upon my shoulder. “At least they didn't kill anyone,” I said weakly. I was of a generation that saw the occupation of the Outsiders as being, ultimately, a good thing. We were healthier, richer, happier, than our parents had been. Nobody worried about environmental degradation or running out of resources anymore. There was no denying we were physically better off for their intervention.
"It was a false mercy that spared the citizens of Galway from immediate death and sent them out into the countryside with no more than the clothes on their backs. How were they supposed to survive? They were doctors and lawyers and accountants. Some of them reverted to brigandry and violence, to be sure. But most simply kept walking until they lay down by the side of the road and died. I can show you as many thousand hours of recordings of the Great Starvation as you can bring yourself to stomach. There was no food to be had, but thanks to the trinkets the Outsiders had used to collapse the economy, everybody had cameras feeding right off their optic nerves, saving all the golden memories of watching their children die."
Mary was being unfair—the economic troubles hadn't been the Outsiders’ doing. I knew because I'd taken economics in college. History, too, so I also knew that the war had, in part, been forced upon them. But though I wanted to, I could not adequately answer her. I had no passion that was the equal of hers.
"Things have gotten better,” I said weakly. “Look at all they've done for . . ."
"The benevolence of the conqueror, scattering coins for the peasants to scrabble in the dust after. They're all smiles when we're down on our knees before them. But see what happens if one of us stands up on his hind legs and tells them to sod off."
* * * *
We stopped in a pub for lunch and then took a hopper to Gartan Lough. There we bicycled into the countryside. Mary led me deep into land that had never been greatly populated and was still dotted with the ruins of houses abandoned a quarter-century before. The roads were poorly paved or else dirt, and the land was so beautiful as to make you weep. It was a perfect afternoon, all blue skies and fluffy clouds. We labored up a hillside to a small stone chapel that had lost its roof centuries ago. It was surrounded by graves, untended and overgrown with wildflowers.
Lying on the ground by the entrance to the graveyard was the Stone of Loneliness.
The Stone of Loneliness was a fallen menhir or standing stone, something not at all uncommon throughout the British Isles. They'd been reared by unknown people in Megalithic times for reasons still not understood, sometimes arranged in circles, and other times as solitary monuments. There were faded cup-and-ring lines carved into what had been the stone's upper end. And it was broad enough that a grown man could lie down on it. “What should I do?” I asked.
"Lie down on it,” Mary said.
So I did.
I lay down upon the Stone of Loneliness and closed my eyes. Bees hummed lazily in the air. And, standing at a distance, Mary began to sing:
The lions of the hills are gone
And I am left alone, alone . . .
It was “Deirdre's Lament,” which I'd first heard her sing in the Fiddler's Elbow. In Irish legend, Deirdre was promised from infancy to Conchubar, the king of Ulster. But, as happens, she fell in love with and married another, younger man. Naoise, her husband, and his brothers Ardan and Ainnle, the sons of Uisnech, fled with her to Scotland, where they lived in contentment. But the humiliated and vengeful old king lured them back to Ireland with promises of amnesty. Once they were in his hands, he treacherously killed the three sons of Uisnech and took Deirdre to his bed.
The falcons of the wood are flown
And I am left alone, alone . . .
Deirdre of the Sorrows, as she is often called, has become a symbol for Ireland herself—beautiful, suffering from injustice, and possessed of a happy past that looks likely to never return. Of the real Deirdre, the living and breathing woman upon whom the stories were piled like so many stones on a cairn, we know nothing. The legendary Deirdre's story, however, does not end with her suicide, for in the aftermath of Conchubar's treachery wars were fought, the injustices of which led to further wars. Which wars continue to this very day. It all fits together suspiciously tidily.
It was no coincidence that Deirdre's father was the king's storyteller.
The dragons of the rock are sleeping
Sleep that wakes not for our weeping . . .
All this, however, I tell you after the fact. At the time, I was not thinking of the legend at all. For the instant I lay down upon the cold stone, I felt all the misery of Ireland flowing into my body. The Stone of Loneliness was charmed, like the well in the Burren. Sleeping on it was said to be a cure for homesickness. So, during the Famine, emigrants would spend their last night atop it before leaving Ireland forever. It seemed to me, prone upon the menhir, that all the sorrow they had shed was flowing into my body. I felt each loss as if it were my own. Helplessly, I started to sob and then to weep openly. I lost track of what Mary was singing, though her voice went on and on. Until finally she sang
Dig the grave both wide and deep
Sick I am, and fain would sleep
Dig the grave and make it ready
Lay me on my true Love's body
and stopped. Leaving a silence that echoed
on and on forever.
Then Mary said, “There's someone I think you're ready to meet."
* * * *
Mary took me to a nondescript cinder-block building, the location of which I will take with me to the grave. She led the way in. I followed nervously. The interior was so dim I stumbled on the threshold. Then my eyes adjusted, and I saw that I was in a bar. Not a pub, which is a warm and welcoming public space where families gather to socialize, the adults over a pint and the kiddies drinking their soft drinks, but a bar—a place where men go to get drunk. It smelled of potcheen and stale beer. Somebody had ripped the door to the bog off its hinges and no one had bothered to replace it. Presumably Mary was the only woman to set foot in the place for a long, long time.
There were three or four men sitting at small tables in the gloom, their backs to the door, and a lean man with a bad complexion at the bar. “Here you are then,” he said without enthusiasm.
"Don't mind Liam,” Mary said to me. Then, to Liam, “Have you anything fit for drinking?"
"No."
"Well, that's not why we came anyway.” Mary jerked her head toward me. “Here's the recruit."
"He doesn't look like much."
"Recruit for what?” I said. It struck me suddenly that Liam was keeping his hands below the bar, out of sight. Down where a hard man will keep a weapon, such as a cudgel or a gun.
"Don't let his American teeth put you off. They're part of the reason we wanted him in the first place."
"So you're a patriot, are you, lad?” Liam said in a voice that indicated he knew good and well that I was not.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Liam glanced quickly at Mary and curled his lip in a sneer. “Ahh, he's just in it for the crack.” In Irish craic means “fun” or “kicks.” But the filthy pun was obviously intended. My face hardened and I balled up my fists. Liam didn't look concerned.
"Hush, you!” Mary said. Then, turning to me, “And I'll thank you to control yourself as well. This is serious business. Liam, I'll vouch for the man. Give him the package."
Liam's hands appeared at last. They held something the size of a biscuit tin. It was wrapped in white paper and tied up with string. He slid it across the bar.
"What's this?"
"It's a device,” Liam said. “Properly deployed, it can implode the entire administrative complex at Shannon Starport without harming a single civilian."
My flesh ran cold.
"So you want me to plant this in the ‘port, do yez?” I said. For the first time in weeks, I became aware of the falseness of my accent. Impulsively, I pulled the neuropendant from beneath my shirt, dropped it on the floor, and stepped on it. Whatever I said here, I would say it as myself. “You want me to go in there and fucking blow myself up?"
"No, of course not,” Mary said. “We have a soldier in place for that. But he—"
"Or she,” Liam amended.
"— or she isn't in a position to smuggle this in. Human employees aren't allowed to bring in so much as a pencil. That's how little the Outsiders think of us. You, however, can. Just take the device through their machines—it's rigged to read as a box of cigars—in your carry-on. Once you're inside, somebody will come up to you and ask if you remembered to bring something for granny. Hand it over."
"That's all,” Liam said.
"You'll be halfway to Jupiter before anything happens."
They both looked at me steadily. “Forget it,” I said. “I'm not killing any innocent people for you."
"Not people. Aliens."
"They're still innocent."
"They wouldn't be here if they hadn't seized the planet. So they're not innocent."
"You're a nation of fucking werewolves!” I cried. Thinking that would put an end to the conversation.
But Mary wasn't fazed. “That we are,” she agreed. “Day by day, we present our harmless, domestic selves to the world, until one night the beast comes out to feed. But at least we're not sheep, bleating complacently in the face of the butcher's knife. Which are you, my heart's beloved? A sheep? Or could there be a wolf lurking deep within?"
"He can't do the job,” Liam said. “He's as weak as watered milk."
"Shut it. You have no idea what you're talking about.” Mary fixed me with those amazing eyes of hers, as green as the living heart of Ireland, and I was helpless before them. “It's not weakness that makes you hesitate,” she said, “but a foolish and misinformed conscience. I've thought about this far longer than you have, my treasure. I've thought about it all my life. It's a holy and noble thing that I'm asking of you."
"I—"
"Night after night, you've sworn you'd do anything for me—not with words, I'll grant you, but with looks, with murmurs, with your soul. Did you think I could not hear the words you dared not say aloud? Now I'm calling you on all those unspoken promises. Do this one thing—if not for the sake of your planet, then for me."
All the time we'd been talking, the men sitting at their little tables hadn't made a noise. Nor had any of them turned to face us. They simply sat hunched in place—not drinking, not smoking, not speaking. Just listening. It came to me then how large they were, and how still. How alert. It came to me then that if I turned Mary down, I'd not leave this room alive.
So, really, I had no choice.
"I'll do it,” I said. “And God damn you for asking me to."
Mary went to hug me and I pushed her roughly away. “No! I'm doing this thing for you, and that puts us quits. I never want to see you or think of you again."
For a long, still moment, Mary studied me calmly. I was lying, for I'd never wanted her so much as I did in that instant. I could see that she knew I was lying, too. If she'd let the least sign of that knowledge show, I believe I would have hit her. But she did not. “Very well,” she said. “So long as you keep your word."
She turned and left and I knew I would never see her again.
Liam walked me to the door. “Be careful with the package outside in the rain,” he said, handing me an umbrella. “It won't work if you let it get damp."
* * * *
I was standing in Shannon Starport, when Homeworld Security closed in on me. Two burly men in ITSA uniforms appeared to my either side and their alien superior said, “Would you please come with us, sir.” It was not a question.
Oh, Mary, I thought sadly. You have a traitor in your organization. Other than me, I meant. “Can I bring my bag?"
"We'll see to that, sir."
I was taken to their interrogation room.
Five hours later I got onto the lighter. They couldn't hold me because there wasn't anything illegal in my possession. I'd soaked the package Liam gave me in the hotel room sink overnight and then gotten up early and booted it down a storm drain when no one was looking. It was a quick trip to orbit where there waited a ship larger than a skyscraper and rarer than almost anything you could name, for it wouldn't return to this planet for centuries. I floated on board knowing that for me there'd be no turning back. Earth would be a story I told my children, and a pack of sentimental lies they would tell theirs.
My homeworld shrank behind me and disappeared. I looked out the great black glass walls into a universe thronged with stars and galaxies and had no idea where I was or where I thought I was going. It seemed to me then that we were each and every one of us ships without a harbor, sailors lost on land.
I used to say that only Ireland and my family could make me cry. I cried when my mother died and I cried when Dad had his heart attack the very next year. My baby sister failed to survive the same birth that killed my mother, so some of my tears were for her as well. Then my brother Bill was hit by a drunk driver and I cried and that was the end of my family. Now there's only Ireland.
But that's enough.
Copyright © 2011 Michael Swanwick
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Poetry: BRIBING KARMA by Danny Adams
* * * *
* * * *
Karm
a can be bribed—and openly,
though coin of the realm is experience.
What will you offer in trade?
The ambitiously young may give up true love
for the fast fortune—
You're already settled into the career marriage?
Then pay a thousand smiling gazes
from your firstborn child
with its arms upraised in hope.
If you still see such looks after the bargain
you are being played false.
—
Maybe you ask for a smaller gift
at a smaller price
but small is relative—
your meaningless trinket is another's lifetime.
The stranger's glance you missed was small,
but given to the right person
it made decades of difference.
When you bribe karma you request
another's treasure.
—
Karma charges accordingly.
—
Altering the deal will not always
reduce your compounding interest.
The fine print is written across
unlit clouds between the stars.
Be a wise investor in this market—
your next payment due may be
a small grace.
—Danny Adams
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Short Story: WE WERE WONDER SCOUTS by Will Ludwigsen
Will Ludwigsen often wishes that he could have been a Wonder Scout instead of just the ordinary kind, but judging by his recent works in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and the Interfictions 2 anthology, maybe he is one after all. Will recently received an MFA from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast program, where he studied partly under the tutelage of Asimov's regular (and Wonder Scoutmaster) James Patrick Kelly.
Yes, I was there: a Wonder Scout, one of nine, at our first campout led by Charles Hoy Fort himself in the summer of 1928. Back then, we didn't have handbooks and uniforms like you do now, no recorders or cameras. All we had was our need to see more than everybody else, to uncover the realness behind things. During that trip to the Adirondacks, we saw something real, all right, something terrible and even wondrous. It's probably saved me from a life of . . . whatever it is that most people lead.
Asimov's SF, August 2011 Page 11
