Asimov's SF, Oct/Nov 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Late that day we reached the first station. Team One had been there before us, and we groused at the mess they'd made. The next day was a repeat of the long monotony, with a few diversions where the road had crumbled. The wind grew stronger. Our tents flapped in the night.

  Secretary Linda found a “cootie” in her shoe in the morning and that was our introduction to native Moabite life. It was a miniature of the now-extinct natives, and unlike Earth bugs, it used lungs to breathe; puff, puff, puff. We stuck it into a bottle with airholes in the lid.

  Next day we tasted salt dust in the air, which grew dingy as we paralleled the pitted, caved-in autobahn. We reached the fork where Team One had turned west, and we envied them. As for us, we'd be in the salt flats two more days even if all went well.

  That night we drove extra hours with our lights on before we found the last supply station. The next morning the wind relented and we broke camp with regretful slowness, now heading into unknown territory. Hours went by before the Coast Guard guy pointed. “Look there."

  We saw a rust-brown flier. It veered toward us. We unbagged our guns. The flier grew to the size of a pontoon raft with no evident wings, a protected platform where people crouched, notching their bows. A few arrows went zing and we returned volleys of fire. Bullets ricocheted; tissue, blood, and bones went splatter. The flier whisked by on a declining trajectory, bellying to the flats as we drove fast to catch up. It plowed a short distance before it stopped.

  Some of the crowd in the flier were prisoners, including two members of Team One. “Stop! Stop it!” they shrilled, pressing themselves to the floor. Their captors were dead, bleeding, waving knives, or tumbling out to continue the fight. They had no concept of surrender. “Stopping” was not in our power. The lad we trussed up slit his throat with an obsidian knife rather than be taken.

  "It must be cultural,” Drago said. “Their five prisoners are all women. Males are supposed to fight to the death."

  We freed the Team One schoolteacher and the cowgirl. Carefully we studied the three others. Like the enemy, they were Sahara brown, with short wool-white hair. The irises of their eyes were pale gray and the midday glare gave their corneas a pinpoint look. They were quite female in all departments although their thighs didn't taper correctly. We knew about the thighs because they wore nothing but straps of leather. “Barbarian princesses,” the engineer said, exercising his imagination. “We'll take them back and win the gratitude of the King and be heroes."

  "First we've got to get this flier to headquarters,” someone else said. “It's the best artifact ever! How the hell does it work?"

  We tried various languages on the three “princesses.” One of them saw Linda's cootie-in-a-jar and fell on her knees in worship. What this communicated was not useful. The Team One captives had no idea what the flier used for fuel, but the cowgirl thought she knew how to make it go. “At least we can fly it south to the next station and keep on, station by station so we're not stranded if it gives out."

  "What about the Kummelwagon?” someone asked.

  "Screw that. This flier is a million times more valuable. There's unknown physics involved here."

  "It's got to be a thousand years old,” I said doubtfully.

  "Then it'll make it another year and another few hundred miles,” said the pickle man.

  In the end we voted. I got to drive the Kummelwagen back south, with the kosher butcher keeping me company. The Team One teacher opted to join us, mistrusting the rust-raft and especially the three princesses. The cowgirl got the flier going, zigzagging at first, and we followed until it became a mote in the dusty haze and finally disappeared.

  The winds began gusting again. “So did your team ever reach the wall?” I asked the schoolteacher, who was unnaturally quiet.

  She shook her head. “It's no wall. Or maybe we didn't go far enough."

  "What is it then?” the kosher butcher asked.

  "I taught astronomy,” the teacher said. “Worlds with striped bands are gas giants. Like Jupiter. A red-banded Jupiter."

  "What are you talking about?” I asked.

  "You only see when you cross the line,” the teacher said. “Moab must be lock-faced on a gas giant. When you cross west, you start seeing the red bulge on the horizon."

  "You mean Moab's a moon?” I asked.

  "It's awfully close in,” the teacher said. “That's obvious given a twenty-eight hour day, which means a twenty-eight hour orbit. The bulge is a huge thing. We never got far enough to find out how huge. We were distracted and then the wild men attacked. The place we were at was almost grassy. They were able to sneak up.” She coughed. “That one white-eyed bitch gave me a cold,” she said, scratching herself. “Jeez, this salt-dust stings."

  Her coughing and itching got steadily worse. That night she started wheezing. Her last ten minutes were terrible as her lungs stopped working. After she died we collapsed her tent and left it like a shroud.

  "We have to assume the disease is contagious. We don't know the incubation period,” said the butcher.

  I nodded. “Let's go. We'll drive in shifts."

  I was first to take the wheel. By now I looked like a planetary explorer; dusty, wild-haired, eyes darting widely in fear of new menaces. My companion consoled himself with Croatian brandy and despite the zero humidity and nocturnal chill, he managed a few beads of sweat. During a brief conversation he damned Heider Hummel, perhaps unfairly, for not setting up a radio-phone system that we could use in emergencies like this.

  Day dawned and he was asleep. I got my second wind and continued. My dry cough could be anything, right? I hadn't necessarily caught a killer disease.

  Eventually I let the butcher take over the wheel, drank sips of brandy, and took a turn trying to sleep. My cough went away. Then—damn—it was back.

  My driving buddy started coughing too. We tried not to notice. He edged up the speed and we made it into the land of gravel.

  We had two days left to go but we made it to the turn-off in thirty hours, stopping only to refuel. We recognized the place by the wheel-tracks but also by a column of smoke on the other side of the hills. Was it Heider Hummel's signal, or something worse?

  We had the rising sun behind us. Ahead was medical attention. We were both definitely coughing now, and more than a little itchy. We gunned the Kummelwagon. As we crested the hills, my friend had me fire a few rounds as a signal to those ahead.

  The smoke dwindled away. We rolled into base camp. We found a pile of burnt bones. No flier. Not much else. A voice from the depot said, “Stay right there. You've been exposed?"

  "We're not sure,” I prevaricated.

  "You'll know within the day,” Heider said. “The same with us. So far, there's a zero survival rate. Those three girls stole the flier and flew off, so it's all for nothing. This disease is only a bad cold for them."

  "We can guess they were exposed to some of our diseases,” said another voice.

  "Drago!” I answered. “How are you?"

  "I've got the itch. It won't be long now."

  I spoke, using up what was left of my voice. “Listen, the way this works at the end, it's like paralysis. The same as the neurotoxin we use to make it through from Earth to Moab. So maybe there's an anti-neurotoxin."

  "We're not going back to Earth to find it,” Heider said. “We don't want to be responsible for spreading this disease to Earth."

  There we were, stymied. Everybody waited to die. I collected some water and found shade. I meant to ask how many were still alive inside the depot, but I never got around to it. I felt weak and queasy. Breathing became difficult.

  The sun moved, taking my shade away. Somewhere I heard someone's last struggles, a few stentorian gasps before his lungs shut down. My own gasps grew worse. I was dizzy. Disoriented. I saw Drago crawling close through the glare, choosing to die with a friend.

  It was such a struggle to breathe. Such a struggle. But then—not such a struggle. Could it be that the crisis was over? I looked at Drago
. He seemed asleep. He wasn't dead either.

  We were the only two baking in the noonday sun. The only two apparently alive. Hours later, I tottered to my feet, found new water, and drank.

  I found a bench and drowsed some more. Drago came shambling. “Heider's dead. They're all dead."

  "Except us."

  "Why us?” Drago looked at the westering sun. “Maybe that's why the wild people go naked. Solar exposure. We lay in the sun, and lived."

  I got up and held on until I felt less faint. I went into the depot to see if the truth was as gloomy as Drago thought. “Hello? Hello?” No one answered.

  Next day Drago and I summoned the strength to drag bodies to the pyre. We sprinkled them with gasoline, and threw a match, and muttered prayers. Then we went back inside. “We'll know if there's any lingering contagion,” Drago said. “People will come through the box. They won't know not to. If they live, it's okay for us to go home to Earth."

  "We can drop a message through. Tell them to stop,” I said.

  Drago shook his head. “What if our message isn't sterile? We can't risk that."

  Neither of us wanted permanent exile, so we sat, pondering quarantine-morality with dulled minds until our appetites and vigor returned. Some new supplies came through, followed by a curious monk.

  He was not grateful to learn he was a guinea-pig, perhaps doomed to our same exile. But we watched and he did not catch the disease. We shared food and handshakes to make sure. In the meantime, others came through.

  The depot returned to what it was before Heider Hummel's invasion. Drago and I decided we were free to go back to Earth, the last remnant of Chemosch Entdeckung. We rested in Trieste one additional day and went our different ways.

  Illinois again! I caught up on messages from Ken even before I landed at O'Hare airport. I reoccupied the house and next Monday I called to see if I could get my old job back. My twenty years with the company meant something, I suppose. It meant I was put on the list with other applicants and would be interviewed for the vacancy quite soon. Definitely. What a favor!

  I checked for email on the computer downstairs. A new message popped up from Drago. “I've reported our sad news to Hummel's sister in Liechtenstein. She's sold me all her family's shares of Chemosch Entdeckung for one euro. I've given it some thought. We know that there are valuable artifacts on Moab. We know how to deal with that first disease. Is this really the time to give up? Think about it. I've got enough money to fund another expedition. I'll be waiting for your long-considered answer."

  I thought about it. Twenty-three people I'd hired were dead on another world, and though they'd signed papers, there'd be inquiries. Why ever would Drago buy Chemosch and set himself up as the target for all those lawyers?

  Well, we'd be targets anyway. Point one.

  Point two: If we were on another world, the lawyers couldn't get to us.

  Back to Moab after all?

  I sat down at the kitchen table. Hours passed and I switched on the lights. I started writing Ken a long letter. I managed fifty-six pages in honor of our old love and a safe quiet past I'd never see again.

  I left the house the next morning.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Copyright © 2005 by Phillip C. Jennings.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Dark Flowers, Inverse Moon by Jay Lake

  A Novelette

  Jay Lake's first novel, Rocket Science, is now available from Fairwood Press. The author publishes short fiction regularly in major markets worldwide and lives in Portland, Oregon. He can be reached through his Web site at www.jlake.com. Jay's most recent story for us, “Martyrs’ Carnival,” appeared in our June issue.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  "There are only two paths to magic.” Speaking from the borrowed pulpit of the tiny Episcopal church, Germaine Templar smiled beatifically. Her dark face was obscured to toothy shadow by the hood of her white aba. “One leads through the bright moonlight and the other through the dark of night."

  Bullshit, thought Sally, lurking in a pew near the back, only a few scattered heads between her and the speaker. There's a million ways to get things done. Unfortunately, you only get to do one of them. And you're lucky if you get that much.

  Sally had come here for the same reason she went to so many lectures and meetings—seeking a path to lead her out of the thicket of Skill and loss in which she had been trapped for too long.

  "You can reach deep inside your heart,” the other woman continued, “to what the ancients called the omphalos, the navel of the world. Standing in that place, you can see both paths."

  Sally's mouth crinkled. If this Templar had the Skill her words hinted at, the real magic of the everyday world, the Colors of Sally's thoughts and mood would be a shout in the dusty church. But Sally didn't believe in this woman. She hadn't believed in anyone or anything in the four years since that night in California when Skilled had died during her Bringing, staining her own new-Brought Skill. Sally slipped from the pew and walked quietly out into the vestibule. The lecture was just another New Age fraud and she was hungry for barbecue.

  * * * *

  The sauce wasn't the greatest, but the smooth, smokey flavor of the beef brisket lay across the grain of the meat like butter on toast. Sally especially loved the crunchy outer shell of the end pieces, where the tang of salt and fat mixed with the crackle of burnt meat. And nothing beat the mouthwatering smell of barbecue.

  Everybody from Texas Monthly to The New Yorker raved about Black's and Kreuz's in Lockhart as two of the best barbecue joints in Texas, but for Sally's money, Chisholm Trail down Highway 183 at the other end of town was just as good as either of them, with half the hassle and a quarter the price.

  The place resembled a down-at-the-heels Elks’ Hall, paneled walls hung with hunting trophies and old newspaper clippings. The service was about to the level of a high school cafeteria but the sausage and brisket excelled. Who cared whether they could make a decent potato salad? Sally was pretty sure the cook was Skilled, had come to the meat recipes that way.

  "You sure Colored up nice and snotty in that church."

  Sally looked up, surprised anyone was speaking to her, to see Germaine Templar again, now dressed in a Texas A&M sweatshirt with a tray of food in her hands and a smile on her face. No longer obscured by her aba, Templar was a beautiful broad-featured woman with skin the color of black coffee and liquid brown eyes, already along into her thirties—perhaps a decade older than Sally.

  Templar's voice was more gentle than her words as she said, with the faintest hint of a Caribbean accent, “Don't usually find Skilled at my little pitches."

  "Little con jobs, more like it.” Sally chewed her mouthful of brisket. She deliberately didn't acknowledge the leading comments about Skilled. “And somehow I doubt your Momma named you Germaine Templar.” Too much heavy-handed mysticism in that name, Sally told herself—le Comte Sainte Germaine and the Knights Templar rolled into one.

  Templar laughed. “No, but that is what it says on my driver's license. Impresses the natives, at least the ones that kept reading after they left high school."

  Sally noticed that the other woman didn't respond to her remarks about con jobs.

  Templar sat down at the Formica table. Her orange plastic tray was covered with small bowls filled with different colors and textures—charro beans, collard greens, mashed yams, okra, and creamed corn. They all swam in varying proportions of butter, water, and iodized salt, accented by the dank smell of the steam tables.

  "No one comes here for the vegetables.” Sally nodded at the food.

  "Company ain't so good either,” the other woman said, “but you take what you get in this life."

  Sally stared at Templar, willing her to go away. She didn't want to like the other woman's charm and good looks, didn't want to give Templar a handle with which to dig deeper into the conversation.

  Templar stared back. “If you truly feel that way, why did you come to the lecture?
"

  Was this woman a Telepath, Sally wondered, to know what she was thinking? Her teacher Wei-Lin had said telepathy was not a truly useful Skill—too much garbage and nonsense in the average person's stream of thought—but some were entranced by the idea of it.

  "Why did I come? Curiosity. Your flyers were interesting.” And loneliness, after four years of running from blood and flames, for the company of the Skilled. Sometimes she even longed for the touch of Skill itself.

  Templar leaned over the table. “But you knew it was crap before you came, right?"

  "Yeah. Sometimes crap is interesting.” Sometimes crap stinks, too.

  Templar laughed. “With the right crap, you can meet some surprising people out here in the sticks.” She forked runny vegetables into her mouth, meeting Sally's stare with a placid, centered smile that rolled as she chewed. The silence extended out between them, a curious absence of tension for a minute, then two, infusing Sally's cautious hostility with the possibility of trust.

  "I'm no mind reader,” Templar continued, “but some things are easy enough to see, Skill or no Skill."

  "Hmm?” Sally bit into a stale roll and wished she had some more brisket.

  "I need something done by someone with Skill, someone with a different perspective than my own. You can maybe help me."

  Sally swallowed her mouthful of roll, dry throat barely taking the dusty bread. Nerves, she thought. This conversation was getting to her. She didn't even read Colors any more, the least and smallest use of Skill. There was no way Sally was going to Skill for some smiling con artist. She shook her head in an emphatic negative.

  "I said maybe help,” Templar said. “And maybe I can help you back."

  * * * *

  US Highway 183 from Lockhart to Austin was thirty-five miles of rolling four-lane blacktop that gentled over the Central Texas hills. The countryside was splashed with springtime bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush, the brilliant colors of the flowers in turn dotted with cattle, mesquite, and live oak. An occasional stand of cottonwood followed a watercourse at the base of the slopes. Traffic was light, even for a Tuesday evening.