Asimov's SF, March 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “What?” Alo2 asked.

  “I've put too much work into this to see it taken away,” he said, feeling tired. “It is the only thing I have to remember Akla by. It is her past—my future.

  He turned to the cousins. “All right. Desla, sweep the back aisles, Sla, wash the wall—you'll want to unpin those scarves first and then put them back up. Tedesla, sort that box of mail cards, and make sure they're grouped together by language. Alo2, can you stay a few more hours and show Tedesla how to operate the credit reader?"

  “Where are you going?” Sla asked.

  “To do some research."

  * * * *

  “Huh,” Bo said after he'd listened to the whole long saga. “Jellidoos are bad news; they know law inside and out."

  “You'd think that they wouldn't know TwiceFar law,” Kallakak said bitterly. He took a sip from the fragrant tea Bo had served him, redolent with yellow, straw-like flowers that smelled like honey and apple.

  “They've probably been waiting for a turn that would allow them to do this,” Bo said. His height had been augmented to over two meters and that, coupled with his ferocious black eyes, helped him keep his own establishment orderly. “A lot of people watch the station to see how things change, watching for opportunities. But how can they claim your space? I thought it was unoccupied until you moved in there."

  “It was,” Kallakak said. “But there was a caff cart stored there for three days at one point, a temporary measure. They are claiming occupation based on having owned most of the cart."

  “Feh,” Bo said. “So you can make it too expensive for them to force you out, I suppose..."

  “Hard to do. In that location, they can recoup a very large sum quickly. Larger than I can raise against them."

  “You can wait them out and see what happens next time the government shifts."

  Kallakak shook his head. “Then they'll have been the most recent occupants—most law will lie in their favor."

  “It's a shame,” Bo said. “I remember when you arrived—took you a year to save up enough to buy citizenship, let alone start to make claim to that space. When you and your wife first came...” The sentence trailed off in awkward silence.

  “All done and gone,” Kallakak said. He drank the last of his tea, now cool.

  * * * *

  Back at the shop, he swore when he saw the mess Sla had created. The scarves, draped against a wall still damp from washing, had bled mottled dyes onto the wall's plastic.

  “I didn't mean to,” it said, shrinking unhappily into itself. Tedesla came up behind it and touched its shoulder, giving Kallakak a look that reminded him of Akla. By the end, she had learned to play his guilt-strings like a musical instrument. The emotion glittered in his mind like Sla's unhappy eyes.

  “It doesn't matter,” he sighed. “Take those down and fold them. We'll sell them to the Jellidoos for a decent sum, I'm sure.” He frowned at the colored wall; the pink and green dye had left pale, feathery patterns like fern leaves.

  Late that night, he heard them whispering together, admonishing Sla. After they finished, he heard the smallest cousin weeping and then the other two comforting it.

  “Of course it is strange here,” Desla said. “But tomorrow we will go and get the little cream pastries from the Food Court that the woman was talking about. Sweet and light as air, she said."

  “We'll bring some back,” Desla murmured. “He deserves to be taken care of, now that he no longer has his wife."

  “He never speaks of her,” observed Tedesla.

  “Never,” said Sla. “Do you think she died of something gruesome?” The other two shushed it and lapsed into murmurs that he couldn't make out.

  When the hallway lights brightened to morning shift white, he let the increased angstroms tug his eyelids awake and drank another of the sour bulbs. His bladder felt much the same as it had the day before, irritated and a little sore, but at least it was no worse.

  Sla was cheerful. Kallakak gave the three the day free, with a handful of coupons and vouchers he had gathered through exchanges with other merchants.

  Alo2 was sweeping out the aisles as he entered.

  “Where's your entourage?” it asked. He shook his head. “Sent the pack of them off to the Food Court."

  “Good. What are you going to do about the Jellidoos?"

  “There's not much I can do,” he said. Moving over to the card-reader, he tapped at it, checking the totals. “I'm going to see the Undersecretary today. Can you watch over the shop again?"

  “And the cousins?” the mechanical said.

  He shook his head. “I told them they were off today and to meet me at evening to eat together."

  “They tried to ask me questions about Akla yesterday."

  “What did you say?"

  “That I didn't know anything. I think they don't yet understand that non-Ballabel can lie. Not that I'm complaining. I had the middle one fetching and carrying for me yesterday when I described the pain that sudden movements caused to my resistors."

  He laughed. “They'll learn soon enough, I'm sure.” He drank another juice bulb, feeling his outlook improving. His cheer was confirmed when the Undersecretary saw him with surprising promptness, but the emotion fled when the official bluntly mentioned the sum the Jellidoos had already provided.

  “I can't match that in the short term,” Kallakak ventured. “But perhaps over the course of time..."

  The official shook his head. “Things change too quickly around here. There hasn't been a government that's lasted more than six months in over a decade,” he said. “Who's to say what could happen? Better to grab what I can while I can."

  “All right,” Kallakak said.

  Bo was similarly discouraging. “Chimp down in the Click Bar said the Undersecretary picks up lonely sailors every once in a while, treats them to a good meal and usually breakfast too, isn't too picky about looks. I don't have anyone that could lean on him."

  “And the Jellidoos are better at brute force leaning anyhow,” Kallakak said. He sighed. “Thanks anyway."

  Coming home through the Food Court, he came across a noodle vendor screaming at the cousins, who stood in a line before the livid, red-faced man, their upper and midhands clasped together in embarrassment.

  “What's happened here?” he asked, hurrying up.

  “They pick up soup unit, get it all mixed around, bad programming!” the man yelled, his voice grating across Kallakak's ears. “Expensive machine!"

  “We were just looking at it,” Sla said sullenly, its tail lashing.

  “We thought that you might get one for the shop,” Desla said.

  “How much to fix?” Kallakak said to the merchant. He wished he could lie, wished he could pretend this trio, so clearly linked to him, were of no relation, no consequence to him. But their every moment proclaimed them his.

  “Fifty credits."

  “Give you ten here and now or twenty store credit."

  “Fifteen here and now.” The merchant swiped Kallakak's card through his reader, punching in the numbers as he eyed the cousins. As though his money wasn't flowing away rapidly enough, Kallakak thought.

  “You're not paying him, are you?” Sla asked. “We were just looking!"

  “Apparently you punched a few buttons,” Kallakak said tiredly. They followed him as he circled around the entrance of the Midnight Stair, towards the shop.

  “You could sell a lot of food in your shop,” Sla said.

  “We aren't zoned to sell food."

  “But you sell the chocolate and fruit boxes."

  “Those are sealed."

  “Oh,” Sla said.

  “Tonight you can watch over the store with Alo2,” he said. “First two of you in a five hour shift, then Desla by itself."

  “All right,” Tedesla said agreeably.

  “What will I do by myself?” Desla asked, alarmed.

  “You can go sit in the shop with them. You just won't be working. Although if you get bored, Alo2 can sh
ow you how to weave hiber baskets. We sell a lot of those."

  “And what will we do when Desla is working?” Tedesla asked. “Sit and weave baskets as well?"

  “You may also wish to go and fetch yourselves some food at that point, and perhaps bring some back for Desla. In such a case, do not look at or touch any machines, but allow the vendor to hand you the food,” he said. “At any rate, I will see you in the morning."

  But in the solitude of the room, things felt empty. Much as they had after Akla's departure, a store full of strange echoes and spaces that could not be filled with boxes of Corrinti jellies and bioluminescent inks. He drank another bulb of medicinal juice and chewed his way through a pack of dried protein flakes, washing them down with swallows of meaty, buttery tea, while his midhands spread lotion on each other, brushing away bits of accumulated, overgrown skin and picking away the cuticle in order to burnish each sharp, curved claw.

  “I do miss you,” he said aloud to the empty air. “I do."

  * * * *

  The next day, Desla managed to flood the shop. All three had had digestive problems due to an excess of cream pastries and the eliminatory near the shop had overloaded and backed up. He waded through an expanse of dirty water, opening the shop door to see more water pooling in the aisles, bearing on its surface a film of dust, lint, and scraps of packing material. He turned the water off at its source and sent for a registered plumber before setting the trio to mopping. They carried the water, four dirty buckets at a time, to the recycler so he could reclaim at least some of the fee.

  “Look,” he said to Tedesla. “The three of you might look around for another job. I will lose the shop in three days to others with a prior claim, and I will not have anything for you to do."

  “We can do that.” Tedesla said. It patted his arm kindly. “Do not worry, Akla's husband. We will help provide for the household, and keep you in the style which she would have wished."

  “That's not what I meant,” he said. “I mean, I will have an excess of goods and no place to put them while I look for more shop space. The room will be quite full."

  Tedesla's ear frills quivered eloquently with disappointment, but all he said was “I see” before he went back to helping mop the water from the floor.

  * * * *

  In between researching ways to save the shop, he tried to find them living space, but there was an influx of visitors—a trade market was being held within the next three days—and so he resigned himself to another week of their presence. He kept them on a schedule opposite his own, pointing out its efficiency in keeping the store constantly open, and paid Alo2 double the usual wages to keep an eye on them.

  Meanwhile he found a private access unit and searched through endless datanets, trying to find a legal loophole in between constant trips to the eliminatory to soothe the burning in his groin. He stopped on the way home for more bulbs and ignored Ercutio's questions. Every search had closed another door. When he got to the store, he found Bo waiting with advice.

  “One of the new employees came from a Jellidoo background, so I asked them about the culture,” he said to Kallakak. “You need to be careful of what you say to them. Their specialty is libel and slander, and they'll provoke you into saying anything that you can possibly be sued for."

  “As though taking the store were not bad enough?” Kallakak grumbled.

  “Rumor says we might be in for a governmental tumble,” Bo said.

  “So soon?"

  “This has been a pretty apathetic government; a lot of old-timers aren't too happy with it."

  “But still, if it were to change within two days, that would be a quicker change than any I've seen here,” Kallakak said.

  “True,” Bo said, “But I thought the mention of it might cheer you up. How are your new additions doing?"

  “They haven't done much so far today,” Kallakak said. “Sla tried to eat a tourist's pet last night, apparently, but Alo2 stopped it in time."

  Bo snorted.

  “They're coming for dinner anytime now,” Kallakak said, glancing at the light level in the corridor.

  But the next people to come in the door were not the cousins, but rather the pair of Jellidoos. Kallakak smiled politely at them and signaled unobtrusively with a midhand to Bo, who drifted nearer, staring at them.

  “We have heard that there have been acts of sabotage in the shop,” the man said. The woman pointed at the colors on the back wall. “And water,” the man added. “There has been a broken pipe?"

  “A small problem, quickly solved,” Kallakak said. Sla and the others came through the door just in time to catch the last.

  “Is there a problem?” Sla asked. The three came to look at the Jellidoos as well.

  “We do not want any more damage to our property,” the man said. “We are prepared to offer a sum for immediate vacancy. Or else we will begin charging for damages to what will be our property."

  “Never!” Sla said indignantly and behind him, Bo rolled his eyes at Kallakak, mouthing the words “libel and slander."

  “You have no right to oust Kallakak! You are very bad people to do so!” Desla added.

  “Tell me more,” the woman said, listening avidly. “Why should we not oust him?"

  “He named this shop after his wife and she remains to watch over it, with love and affection!” Tedesla said, despite Kallakak's frantic signal.

  Kallakak opened his mouth to correct it, but then shrugged and remained silent.

  “How so?” the man demanded. “Do you mean she still lives here?"

  “In her death, as in her life, she remains by his side!” Sla declaimed. “Looking after him with eternal devotion."

  “A ghost!” the woman exclaimed, paling. She and her compatriot exchanged glances.

  “It is a trick,” he said, but she shook her head. “Ballabels cannot lie,” she said. “See his ear frills?"

  Although they could, Kallakak thought, neglect to correct mistaken impressions. Akla had left aboard a freighter, saying that she wanted to “find herself,” and had never come back. No sane Ballabel chose a life of solitude, and he had not wanted to correct the cousins in thinking her dead. She would have, he thought, preferred that.

  “Will you be withdrawing the claim?” he said to the man as the Jellidoos pushed their way through the cousins towards the door. The woman spat and made a gesture he did not recognize as his only reply.

  “Nicely done,” Bo said as she exited.

  Kallakak beamed at the cousins with effulgent satisfaction. Fumbling behind the counter, he took out an unopened decanter of spirits and fumbled at the stopper.

  “So the shop is safe?” Tedesla asked.

  “Yes,” Kallakak said, pouring drams into mugs patterned with glittering stars.

  “We don't need to get jobs after all! We can keep working in the shop!” Sla said.

  “Well,” said Kallakak. “I don't know if I'd go that far."

  Copyright (c) 2008 Cat Rambo

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  * * *

  Short Story: THE WORLD WITHIN THE WORLD

  by Steven Utley

  Steven Utley tells us he is “still the internationally unknown author of the story collections Ghost Seas (Australia, 1977), The Beasts of Love (USA, 2005), and Where or When (United Kingdom, 2006).” An anthology that he co-edited with Michael Bishop, Passing for Human, will be out soon from PS Publishing. Unknown or otherwise, this author's fiction, poems, and, most recently, a cartoon, have been appearing in Asimov's since 1977. In his eerie new tale, we catch a glimpse of ghosts and machines and...

  The World Within the World

  “Damn jump station's haunted,” Summers growled, frowning at the momentarily dormant machine. One of the monitors had just beeped inexplicably. He looked around at his co-worker, Cullum, and their two visitors, Lane the Navy doctor and Cutsinger the physicist.

  “Summers here thinks we have spooks,” said Cullum. “I think we have a lunatic."

  “
Really. Spooks.” Summers nodded at the monitor that had beeped. “It's always doing that."

  “It's always done that,” Cullum said, “as far back as I can remember."

  “Short circuit somewhere,” Cutsinger said.

  Summers shook his head vehemently. “We've taken it apart and replaced everything in it six, eight times. It isn't electrical. It's—” he pondered word choices for a moment “—ectoplasmatical."

  “I have no idea in hell what you're talking about,” said Cullum, “and I'm willing to bet you don't, either."

  Summers addressed himself to the other two men. “It isn't just the monitor registering something when there shouldn't be anything there to register. Every now and then, when we're alone in here, I sense we're not alone in here. Like ... disembodied entities are moving around and past and through us. Gives me kind of a little chill down my back. You never get those?"

  “Everybody gets those,” said the doctor. “Just a glitch in the nervous system."

  Cullum made a wry face at Summers. “'Disembodied entity’ is kind of an oxymoron, isn't it? You're probably just high on ozone."

  “A ghost is supposed to be—"

  “Supposed to be!"

  “—supposed to be some kind of psychic residue left at the scene of a violent or at least traumatic incident."

  “Yes, so?

  “So, what could be more traumatic than going through a spacetime anomaly, being shot across hundreds of millions of years into prehistoric times? We all came through, and it felt like being worked over with a baseball bat."

  “Maybe that's the answer,” Cullum said drily. “You got hurt in your head when you came through.” He nodded significantly at Dr. Lane. “Undiagnosed concussion."

  “Perhaps,” said Cutsinger, “the blip on your monitor is an electronic echo of the person who goes through. A kind of human non-being. It might even have the person's memories and ideas and emotions."

  “What about the stuff that comes through?” said Cullum. “Ghostly toilet tissue for ghostly bums?"