Asimov's SF, January 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  For a day and a half she motors steadily across the ocean. Out here, away from everyone, she discovers that at last there is nowhere left to hide. Her sister is always in her dreams. She appears even before the dark massive ever-present leviathan.

  “Forgive me,” her sister says. She says it every time Tish dreams. And every time she says it, it breaks Tish's heart a little more.

  “I can't,” Tish says. Tears run down her face and suddenly it is raining as if her tears have overrun the heavens. “I can't. You don't know what you're asking."

  Her sister's gaze is compassionate, her red dress fades to a white shirt and dark trousers, her hair pulled back from her face, her feet bare. “Yes,” she says softly, “I do."

  Tish doesn't know how to call the leviathan, despite the class, despite her assurances to Fallon. She strips naked and stands on the deck of her tiny boat and raises her arms to the heavens. She thinks perhaps she will never go back, she will stay here in the middle of the ocean. Maybe if she stays forever in the middle of nowhere time will literally stop, and she will never need to go forward or backward again.

  She sleeps on the seventh day, or maybe the eighth—she's lost track of time and yesterday nearly forgot to check in with Fallon and the others, until the alarm on the communicator grew so annoying she had to answer it.

  “Are you okay out there?” Fallon had asked her. “Maybe we should pull you in."

  “No!” Tish said. Then, quieter, “I think that I can see them."

  “Really?” There is a sharp excitement in Fallon's voice that he can't quite hide. “You can see them?"

  Tish cuts the connection. She can't, really, see leviathan on the horizon, but she knows they are there.

  Her sister is with her all the time now.

  “Forgive me,” her sister whispers in her ear.

  “No,” says Tish. “You know,” she adds.

  “Do you?” her sister whispers.

  “Yes.” Tish can see a gray cloud on the horizon. “Yes,” she says, “I know."

  The ocean rises in a rolling swell as the leviathan approaches. The sun appears and disappears behind wisps of clouds. A fresh morning wind lifts the hair on Tish's neck. She can feel the boat rock beneath her feet as she stands to meet her monster.

  This is the story: that her sister left home and joined the revolution, that the government came looking for her, that Tish turned her in—out of fear, out of righteousness, out of cold-blooded calculation—she doesn't know anymore. The revolution failed. Her sister died in prison.

  This is the truth: Tish didn't run away while her sister stayed. Running away would have been heroic compared to what she really did. She betrayed her sister to save herself.

  The leviathan is beneath her boat now. The tiny craft tilts and bobs as it rides the fast-moving swell. Tish strips off her clothes and jumps into the water. The ocean closes in around her, cool and warm at the same time. She dives deeper, but at first she sees nothing, just ocean and the watery glint of sunlight.

  She surfaces and waits. She knows that he will come. He is her leviathan. She was supposed to call him, but he is calling her, has called her all the way out here to the middle of the ocean. It means something, she thinks, that he called her. It has to mean something.

  Then she feels it. He is coming. She wants to see all of him; she wishes she could fly.

  Something brushes her foot, the merest touch, like the lightest feather or the gentlest breeze.

  “Forgive me.” Her sister's voice returns, whispering in her ear.

  The unexpected voice startles Tish and a wave slaps her face. Coughing, she tries to reply, though she can feel the leviathan now—it's as if he is suddenly everywhere—in her head, in her heart, in her skin. “I can't—” she can't even say the words—forgive, forgiveness—"I betrayed you,” she says. “I killed you.” She chokes on the words, as if she has swallowed the sea.

  The leviathan nudges her feet. She is amazed that his touch is so gentle, so light. She wants to duck down beneath the waves. She wants to swim with him through endless oceans. She wants to make love to him in sea foam and sunlight. She wants him to love her, to notice she's there, to tell her the universe forgives her for what she's done, to tell her he forgives her.

  Suddenly he is directly underneath her, so massive his body doesn't even curve beneath her feet. He lifts her up, straight out of the water, higher and higher and higher. She is exhilarated and sad at the same time, both emotions so huge that her mind can scarcely encompass them. She wants to take the universe back, to come here clean and whole, to embrace the leviathan as a whole person, not someone who never really lived.

  She told herself when the government came for her sister that she had no choice. She told herself they would have found her sister anyway, they would have killed her anyway. She told herself if she hadn't done it, she would have died too. She told herself a lifetime of lies, thinking she could hide the truth.

  The leviathan lifts her so high she can see the Hunde far, far away, nearly on the horizon. She knows that they are coming, that her time is limited. That she must leave the leviathan, that he must leave her.

  The past will never change, no matter how far she runs, no matter what lies she tells herself. It can only be accepted. It can only be what it is.

  The leviathan reaches the top of its arc; Tish can feel his body shift, as he begins to descend.

  “Forgive me,” the leviathan says as he enters the water.

  “I forgive you,” Tish says and dives with him into the depths of the endless sea.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Deborah Coates

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Novelette: 'THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED’ BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

  by Tanith Lee

  Tanith Lee's 2007 publications included the last book in her Lionwolf trilogy, No Flame But Mine (Macmillan), Piratica 3 (Hodder), and Indigara, a young-adult novella out from Firebird. She tells us two current projects on the violent Bronze Age and Futurist Polluted Cities “are still being researched and constructed.” Her latest tale takes a disturbing and violent look at the effects a deadly new plague could have on human society.

  * * * *

  A man had collapsed in the airport. They were dealing with it in the usual efficient way. It had taken so long to get in through the front-line tome security, and they tried to hustle me on like the rest when I paused to see. I blazed my PI card. They backed away then and let me watch.

  God, he was a handsome guy. I mean, he was truly beautiful, the man being lifted on to the trolley. Gold hair, unlined tan of skin, perfect weight—looked like he could run for the Olympian at St. Max. But he was barely conscious now, though softly whimpering, and they'd already set up the float-drip to feed him pain relief and rehydration. His eyes were shut.

  The nearest medic glanced at me. “Seen enough? Just stick around,” she snapped. Her voice and eyes were full of controlled rage. She wasn't wearing a medi-mask, and she was rather special-looking herself.

  I took the elevator up to the next stage of security (heightened now), and another long wait. I was glad I'd brought a book.

  * * * *

  They are pretty tight, the tomes. Enclosed runway and landing area, outer airlock, double inner airlock, frisker, and then every robo-check known to mankind, plus all the extra ones installed during the past seven months. Iris-reading, prints, bone-marrow stat, DNA, blood and phy stat, skull-template. Molecular shower. Absolvement.

  Going the other way, the treatment is even more complex. Four and three quarter hours as opposed to the three needed going in. But who's aiming to leave? Aside, of course, from people like me.

  * * * *

  “Hi, Jack."

  Good old Edmund Kovalchy. There he was, just the same as ever, twenty to twenty-five pounds overweight, and bald as a balloon.

  He led me down the block and into the diner.

  It was only around noon, not a lot of custom yet. And there wouldn't be, he as
sured me, until much later in the day, when citizens surfaced from the haze and made it here for a dunch. Only a couple of diehards sat at tables far off across the big shadowy room, an old woman with green hair scribbling on a notepad, a decanter and glass beside her, and a feller in one corner, who was working his way through the kind of breakfast I—and Ed—used to regularly take when we were twenty-four: double steak, triple egg, mushrooms, carrash, hashes, and a separate big bowl of fries.

  “Each to his own poison."

  “Sure,” I said. The two people looked okay. “How are you doing, Edmund, my man?"

  “Fine,” he said, grinning. “Gained two extra pounds, so the weight-winner tells me. Oh, and I reckon my very last scalp hair resigned last night. Found it on the pillow. Marianna said that deserved a coffee cake. So she's baking one. You are welcome to drop by around nine tonight, if you can make a break, sample the same."

  We paused awhile, thinking respectfully of Marianna's coffee cake. Funny the way little things hold you.

  But his eyes were sad.

  Of course they were.

  It was only a couple of weeks ago.

  “How's she taking it, Ed?"

  “She's a warrior, Jack. Y'know that."

  “I know."

  The service wheeled over, and we ordered sandwiches, some rye whiskey for Ed, and a tumbler of fresh orange for me. “Got to watch it till later."

  “Sure, sure. Make up for it then."

  “Like half the city,” I said.

  Maybe I shouldn't have, should have waited. But Ed is one of my oldest friends. We go back such a long way, sometimes I can barely count the dips in the road between now and then. But some of them were steep. And we made it, Ed and I, and Marianna.

  “How is it?” he asked me, serious, looking up from his glass. “Any progress?"

  “Not much."

  “I thought not,” he said. We're in the same business. His Corp clearance is omega. No need to lie, and in fact I couldn't. One of the reasons I was here to see him was to link him in, put him wise. I reached over and laid the little disc, only about the size of a quarter, next to the bottle. “For your eyes only."

  “Yeah.” He slid it into the secure pocket. “My eyes though, Jack, have seen a great many things in this city during the past sixteen weeks."

  “Sure."

  “What goes out on TV-wide?"

  “Not a lot. They edit. To spare the Sensitive Viewer."

  He let go a loud gout of laughter which startled me. I had every reason to think he might act unstable, but somehow Ed, of anyone—I'd thought he would handle it. In another second he did. “Sorry, chum. Just makes me angry."

  “It does.” And it does. Some angry, some sad, and some very afraid.

  “Aren't they doing a frigging thing?” Now his voice was soft, and his sad eyes fixed only on the whiskey.

  “They are trying. But—"

  I broke off. And he, not even turning, knew at once why I did.

  “Some of them—one of them has come in,” he said, “right?"

  “That's right."

  “Gal or guy?"

  “Guy."

  “Look like trouble?"

  “Not yet."

  “Christ,” he said. “He's early. Most of ‘em don't shift until late afternoon—why would they? How far is he along?"

  “Looks a way."

  Ed turned slowly and squinted back into the light where the doorway gave on the sidewalk. He took a brief visual camera shot of what I had seen, a man apparently around thirty-four, built of lean muscle, and with black hair hung to his collar. He was dressed okay, which sometimes they are not, some of them. Especially later, when plenty came out flaunting naked. The man laughed when he saw us looking. Then walked, easy, to our table.

  “Hi, fellers."

  “Sorry,” Ed mumbled.

  “'S'okay. Don't blame you. And after all, you never know. You may still be able to stare at me next Thanksgiving."

  As he strode off to the service bar, our sandwiches arrived. Only the woman with the green hair stood up and left, walking out with the decanter of yellow wine half-full in her hand.

  * * * *

  Gane's Journal X7

  * * * *

  I was never the pretty one. Ugly duckling, me. Used to upset Mom more than me, I think. I think she made me self-conscious.

  My nose was too big, and my mouth—fat, and my eyes not big enough, and my hair too fine and greasy. And diet all I would, still too heavy. The humiliation of the school scales. And then the weight-loser. Every other kid sloughing off the fat, and poor Gane. Hey, Gane's gained another pound!

  Lay off the Chocostars, they told me. Never believed I didn't eat them anyway.

  Metabolic weight, they said, when I was an anorexic twenty-year-old, losing my hair and weighing in at one hundred and seventy-six pounds.

  You're too fat, said Mel, when he ditched me and I was thirty.

  You fat cow, said Martin, when he left me the day after my fortieth birthday.

  And then, last year. Fall. Then.

  Just a little thing.

  Hey, Ganey! You've finally cracked it! In fall, seven pounds fall from me, like leaves.

  “What shampoo is that, Gane? Say, your hair is brilliant."

  This, about two months before they fix on the dome.

  * * * *

  After Ed and I split, I took a cab over to Memphis Street. The driver was full of it.

  “Y'know what I think it is?” A prompting pause.

  “What do you think it is?"

  “It's these new pump aerosols."

  “Right. How's that?"

  “Well, buddy. Ya spray the darn things all over. Some folks gonna react. What ya expect."

  I expect to hear the theory of every man I meet who isn't creeping through a shadow or beating out his brain on a wall. And I've heard plenty. It's the ME block. It's terrorism-funded. It's extra-terrestrials. It's feral crops that have grown legs and glowing eyes, and run through the night snarling. It's vampires. So: Angry, sad, scared—and stupid. Just plain dumb.

  The front for the Corp building on Memphis is a deli, and I climbed up the old paper-screws of fifty-one stairs to reach the office.

  There's big security on the door, always was. But now too, another airlock, bullet-proof, bomb-proof, maybe.

  Wilson sat behind his desk. He looked the same as ever, too.

  “Good to see you, Jack, despite the circumstance."

  “Yeah, likewise."

  I placed the second, larger, disc by his hand, and a robo-service whipped out the wall and squirreled it away.

  “How is it outside?"

  I told him.

  Wilson looked grim. “Since we got closed down, we've gotten a bit of a delay in here finding things out. That wasn't so at the start. Except we get all the news—unexpurgated—for the other three cities involved—"

  He consulted his lappo-file as if to avoid my look when I said, dumb as the cabby, “Three?"

  “Ah, you hadn't heard. Yeah, three now.” He showed me the screen. “Here is the latest. Eastern seaboard. One hundred and eighty-seven confirmed, ninety pending. At this stage, that's enough. They'll be shutting down by this evening. Shut-down gets faster, has to. They were over a month with us, you can imagine the pink tape."

  “Another city under a tome."

  He looked at me. A cold-eyed bastard, Wilson, steel and mirror.

  “What else, Jack, do we got?"

  * * * *

  The tomes, it's jargon. Officially they are known as what they are, domes. Hygienic, air-proof, waterproof. Not another rainy day, some of them joked, when the first was lowered and cemented into place. Pure self-cleaning, germ-erasing air. And not a chance of a rogue airplane breaking through. Never a cloud without a silver...

  * * * *

  Gane's Journal X7

  * * * *

  “Good morning, Miss—uh—” said my regular physician, as I walked into his office.

  “Carraden
e."

  “Carradene? Now that's strange, we already have a Miss Carradene."

  “I am she."

  He smiled. “No you're not."

  I did what I had to around the city. Had gotten through most of it before the deadline. Like Ed, and others, had told me, by then I began to see them coming out of their bolt-holes into the light of deepening afternoon. It reminded me of semi-nocturnal animals leaving their burrows. Dangerous animals, and the rest of the prey-animals then scatter off the veldt. The streets were certainly emptying. The vulnerable ones, whose employers still don't let them off early, club together for a taxi or a hire-bus. There is safety in numbers. Perhaps.

  But of course it's less any kind of attack they're afraid of, than just the hell of foreseeing.

  Did anyone think it would ever be like this?

  Did anyone ever predict it could happen like this?

  We've watched the movies, the shock-doccus, read—some of us—the history books.

  There was an old guy sat on the sidewalk outside Ed's apartment block, drinking a can of Colby's. He looked up and shook his dirty grey locks at me and winked a bleary eye. “You an’ me both, sir. The weak shall inherit."

  “Sure, pops."

  * * * *

  Marianna.

  I used to have a big thing about her, when Ed and I were in our twenties. But she chose Ed, and a better guy she could not have found, if she had panned the whole state for gold.

  And cook ... God, could Marianna cook.

  Yes, a cliché. But you see, she liked to cook. With her, it was performance art, it was art. And it even lasted. You never forgot. I have dated events sometimes from the food she made—the day of the Lobster with Oranges, the hour of the Cinnamon Cookie—

  Ed used to tell me, these past thirty years, you kept your weight down, boy, because you never lived with anyone could cook like Marianna.

  In fact, the past half year, I'd had something else to help me there. Better late than never.

  She, though, never altered. Well, okay. She was older, around fifty-nine now I guessed, I'd never really known her age. Her hair had greyed but she blonded it at the salon. Her figure was lush but not out of shape. So, a few lines in the rose-petal of her face.