What do you say to somebody who’s seen to the bottom of your wretched and inadequate soul?
“I want to apologize,” I said.
With something very close to compassion, the Widow said, “It’s too late for that, Danny. It’s over. Everything’s over. You and I only ever had the one trait in common. We neither of us could ever let go of anything. Small wonder we’re back together again. But don’t you see, it doesn’t matter what you want or don’t want—you’re not going to get it. Not now. You had your chance. It’s too late to make things right.” Then she stopped, aghast at what she had just said.
But we both knew she had spoken the truth.
“Widow,” I said as gently as I could, “I’m sure Charlie—”
“Shut up.”
I shut up.
The Widow closed her eyes and swayed, as if in a wind. A ripple ran through her and when it was gone her features were simpler, more schematic, less recognizably human. She was already beginning to surrender the anthropomorphic.
I tried again. “Widow …” Reaching out my guilty hand to her.
She stiffened but did not draw away. Our fingers touched, twined, mated. “Elizabeth,” she said at last. “My name is Elizabeth Connelly.”
We huddled together on the ceiling of the Roxy through the dawn and the blank horror that is day. When sunset brought us conscious again, we talked through half the night before making the one decision we knew all along that we’d have to make.
It took us almost an hour to reach the Seven Sisters and climb down to the highest point of Thalia.
We stood holding hands at the top of the mast. Radio waves were gushing out from under us like a great wind. It was all we could do to keep from being blown away.
Underfoot, Thalia was happily chatting with her sisters. Typically, at our moment of greatest resolve, they gave us not the slightest indication of interest. But they were all listening to us. Don’t ask me how I knew.
“Cobb?” Elizabeth said. “I’m afraid.”
“Yeah, me too.”
A long silence, and then she said, “Let me go first. If you go first, I won’t have the nerve.”
“Okay.”
She took a deep breath—funny, if you think about it—and then she let go, and fell into the sky.
First she was like a kite, and then a scrap of paper, and finally she was a rapidly tumbling speck. I stood for a long time watching her falling, dwindling, until she was lost in the background flicker of the universe, just one more spark in infinity.
She was gone and I couldn’t help wondering if she had ever really been there at all. Had the Widow truly been Elizabeth Connelly? Or was she just another fragment of my shattered self, a bundle of related memories that I had to come to terms with before I could bring myself to finally let go?
A vast emptiness seemed to Spread itself through all of existence. I clutched the mast spasmodically then, and thought: I can’t!
But the moment passed. I’ve got a lot of questions, and there aren’t any answers here. In just another instant, I’ll let go and follow Elizabeth (if Elizabeth she was) into the night. I will fall forever and I will be converted to background radiation, smeared ever thinner and cooler across the universe, a smooth, uniform, and universal message that has only one decode. Let Thalia carry my story to whoever cares to listen. I won’t be here for it.
It’s time to go now. Time and then some to leave. I’m frightened, and I’m going.
Now.
About the Author
Michael Swanwick published his first story in 1980, adding him to a generation of new writers that included Pat Cadigan, William Gibson, Connie Willis, and Kim Stanley Robinson. Since then he has been honored with the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards, and received a Hugo Award for fiction in an unprecedented five out of six years. He also has the pleasant distinction of having lost more major awards than any other science fiction writer.
Roughly one hundred fifty stories have appeared in Amazing, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, High Times, New Dimensions, Eclipse, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Interzone, the Infinite Matrix, Omni, Penthouse, Postscripts, Realms of Fantasy, Tor.com, Triquarterly, Universe, and elsewhere. Many have been reprinted in best-of-the-year anthologies, and translated into Japanese, Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese, Czech, and French. Several hundred works of his flash fiction have also been published.
A prolific writer of nonfiction, Swanwick has published comprehensive studies of Hope Mirrlees and James Branch Cabell, as well as a book-length interview with Gardner Dozois. He has taught at the Clarion, Clarion West, and Clarion South writing workshops.
Swanwick is the author of nine novels, including In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, Stations of the Tide, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, Jack Faust, Bones of the Earth, The Dragons of Babel, and Dancing with Bears. His short fiction has been collected in Gravity’s Angels, A Geography of Imaginary Lands, Moon Dogs, Tales of Old Earth, Cigar Box Faust and Other Miniatures, The Dog Said Bow Wow, and The Best of Michael Swanwick. His most recent novel, Chasing the Phoenix, chronicles the adventures of confidence artists Darger and Surplus in post-Utopian China. He is currently at work on a third and final novel set in Industrialized Faerie.
He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter. In 2016 he will appear as guest of honor at MidAmeriCon II, the World Science Fiction Convention.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“The Very Pulse of the Machine” © 1998; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“The Dead” © 1996; first appeared in Starlight, ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden
“Scherzo with Tyrannosaur” © 1999; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“Ancient Engines” © 1999; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy” © 1995; first appeared in Killing Me Softly, ed. Gardner Dozois
“The Mask” © 1994; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“Mother Grasshopper” © 1997; first appeared in A Geography of Unknown Lands
“Riding the Giganotosaur” © 1999: first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“Wild Minds” © 1998; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O” © 2000; first appeared in Tales of Old Earth
“Microcosmic Dog” © 1998; firs appeared in Science Fiction Age
“In Concert” © 1992; first appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
“Radiant Doors” © 1998; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“Ice Age” © 1984; first appeared in Amazing
“Walking Out” © 1995; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“The Changeling’s Tale” © 1994; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“Midnight Express” © 2002; first appeared in Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers, eds. Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling
“The Wisdom of Old Earth” © 1997; first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction
“Radio Waves” © 1995; first appeared in Omni
Copyright © 2000 by Michael Swanwick
Cover design by Jesse Hayes
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3651-1
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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