Asimov's SF, January 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Maybe not."

  “Don't know if he'll even see me. My own physician kept refusing to believe I was me. I mean, I'm over sixty. He thought I was insane, or I'd stolen my identity. And then when he changed too—the practice shut."

  “Yes."

  She crosses her legs. Oh, those legs.

  She's lovely. She's dead.

  “I just want to ask them something. I—sort of want to know—how long I've got."

  I said, “They can't always tell. Some have had it six months, or a year. No longer than a year, at least not so far that anyone knows. Others ... It can be sooner."

  “Somebody said the fitter you are the quicker..."

  “It can do that. If you're fine to start with it has less to work on."

  “Like—somebody young. Good-looking. I was obese, or so they said. I looked like shit.” She gives a sudden silky laugh.

  Nobody, even if that offends them, takes any apparent notice. They're all pretending she isn't here, or that everything is ordinary.

  “And, you said, you're sixty."

  “Yes,” she says.

  “That's good. You'll probably go over ten months, a full year. That's the current notion. A friend of mine, his wife's father was eighty-six, partly blind, and very frail. He was going strong for more than eleven months. And he didn't get sick. He died in a fight."

  I'm speaking, impartially, of Marianna's father. I had never been shown a recent image, how he'd become after changing. Only the old photo, the view of a tired old man. I hadn't seen him either, in the apartment, sixteen weeks back, cursing Marianna, this young handsome godlike naked man of thirty-five or six, with his shining hair and mouth full of flawless teeth and dirt. Young enough to be his daughter's son. Before Ed managed to throw the naked god out. Was that how Ed had gotten infected? Very likely.

  Just a touch will do it.

  I reach over and pat the girl's smooth hand, with its long strong oval nails. “It's okay. Hang in there. They're working on a cure."

  And they are.

  Only trouble is, they don't know what this thing is.

  Looked at under all those microscopes, in all those cunningly lit dark rooms, that tiny golden evanescent spangle, now here, now gone.

  Where has it come from? No one knows. Has it been created willfully, or in error, or has it only spontaneously come to be? No one can tell. Brought in or simply dropped from space, or risen up through millennia from the depths of the guts of the world, it bears no relation to anything known, or even to the premise of the unknown possible.

  A door comes open up the long room.

  Out steps Ed Kovalchy, smiling and quiet. The thick new cap of blond hair sheens on his head. It might not be anything. He might only be white already and regularly shave his scalp.

  He walks briskly to me, sees the girl, and looks at her with his sad eyes.

  “My name's Gane,” she says, “that's Gainor Carradene. Nice to meet you.” And she gets up after all and goes out.

  And Ed says to me, quiet under the Muzak, “Let's find a bar."

  So we go find a bar, although by now it's almost six PM, and on the streets the carnivores are gathering in their glowing pelts of murder.

  * * * *

  All my life I read books, lots of them. Off a screen, between paper or cloth or leather covers. Always have. My weakness. My eyesight's always been good too, I don't even need spectacles now, in my fifty-sixth year.

  So I have, in the course of reading, read about the great disasters, the wars and sieges, the plagues, when mankind, trapped in the pit of a single village or city or country or continent, roiled and rioted, went mad in an orgy of lust and venery, the last supper of hate, before the blackest death of all swept in to claim them.

  And that's what happens now.

  Once they know they have it, they leave the rules behind. They take off their clothes and their souls and hang them on a hook, and reach deep into the fire of life for one last several times.

  Ed didn't care now. He had joined the legion. He sat and drank whiskey, all one bottle, and then he had some more.

  He hadn't called Marianna. What could he say?

  She knows. She knows.

  The young think they won't get this, I mean the truly young ones, the ones who really not only look, but are eighteen, twenty, thirty. But they do get it. It just kills them much quicker. Snuffs them out between its amorphous golden fingers. And the children. Quicker still. They just drop. There's not much it can do there, only kill. Maybe it's kinder, then, the fast erasing, like a dab of white-out on a printed page...

  It kills them all. It kills anything human, or one must presume almost anything, because there will be the cases of natural immunity, even if thus far none have shown up.

  Four cities down now, as of eight AM today.

  I heard that from Wilson over the scram CP not an hour ago. Over to the west, the latest conquest. Oh, and the first cases showing up in Europe too. One suspect (for one read one thousand) in the far East.

  It has a name.

  Everything has to have one, doesn't it.

  “You're not drinking, Jack,” Ed said, slurring a little. “G'on. Let's drink to long life.” In the middle of the bar dance floor, where the neons are starting to flash orange and blue and white, a whirling girl with bare breasts that put the goddess of love to shame arcs slowly over and falls to the ground.

  None of the others take any notice, except they dance around her for a while. But some minutes after, I see they just dance over her, trampling her into the earth. The floor's wet there, white-wet, blue-wet, orange.

  * * * *

  Symbiosis—Is an interaction between two differing organisms which come to live in physical association. This relationship is usually of advantage to both, i.e. as with Jentle's coral, whose bright color and luminescence, so attracting to prey, spring from the action of the minute boring worm Isrulum. However, as in this particular partnership, if other conditions become unsuitable, the worm will abandon the host it has colonized, at which both color and light are lost, and hollowed out and starved, the coral dies. From the Greek word Sumbios—a companion.

  * * * *

  Parasite—Is an organism existing in or on another and living at the expense of said other. A parasite will normally colonize and destroy the host. From the Latin Parasitus via the Greek Parasitos—one who eats at another's table.

  * * * *

  Virus—Is a submicroscopic infective agent (consisting of etc:) able to multiply only within the living walls of a host. From the Latin Virus—a poison.

  * * * *

  Nobody even tries that hard now to stay clear, as I saw for myself first in the airport. The healthy ones are getting blasé, many of them. What can you do? The air is full of it, was so even before the tome. Every breath you take.

  Symparasic Virus.

  That is the name. SPV for short. Used in code once before everyone started to have to know.

  The initial cases went completely overlooked for months, longer, because of the peculiar action, the method the virus employs.

  Before it kills, it makes beautiful. It corrects any imperfections, restores movement and function to impaired limbs, anatomy, organs, dispenses with aging, reversing time to a level legitimately in balance with existing years—twenties for fifties and early sixties, say, thirties for the ones over eighty. It banishes infirmity. Whatever is even cosmetically wrong it expunges and makes fine. Whatever is right it improves to the highest degree endurable. The infected, and, by then, dying victims, become glorious, and remain so until the last three to seven hours of their lives.

  Why? It's obvious, isn't it. To make them enticing.

  SPV likes to colonize. To conquer. That is its sole blind and total ambition. And so each host grows enticing in order to lure further prey—to which the virus can then pass.

  That works more or less one hundred hundred percent.

  Because we love beautiful things, most of us. We love to look at them and ho
ld them, and kiss them and fuck them, and, at the worst, maybe we just pick up the clean scarf they dropped unknowing on the sidewalk, and sleep with it under the pillow...

  It doesn't think, Symparasic. Doesn't need to. No more than the snow-ball rolling downhill that becomes an avalanche.

  But I mentioned the last hours.

  A comparatively swift death compared to the kind of stuff the human race has routinely suffered. But not enviable.

  Deliquescence. That word will do, I guess. That's enough. Enough for all the world, and for Ed, who was my friend. And Marianna maybe. And that little girl with her auburn-burning hair. Enough.

  * * * *

  I got him home across the city. The cab driver was one of the night guys from the Corp. He too had his shotgun riding alongside in the passenger seat.

  Marianna met me, calm and unruffled as she wouldn't ever have been if I'd just dragged her partner in from one of our youthful drunks of thirty years before.

  Once she'd put him to bed, she said to me, “I guess he won't feel bad tomorrow—no hangover. Do I have that right?"

  “No. He'll be fine."

  “That's how it works, this—thing."

  “SPV. Yes, how it works. Anything goes wrong like that, it puts it right. Alcohol—even tainted food—toxins. Neutralizes them in a few hours."

  We stood in the living room. Books on the walls, the music and TV center, good colors, home comforts.

  “If there's anything I can do, Marianna. Someone'll be out and see him tomorrow around noon. Henry, I think."

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I have to go back to—well, where I have to go. But I can be here again soon as I can if there is anything—"

  “No, Jack,” she said firmly. “Don't come again. Just—let us go now. We all just have to let go, don't we. It's all right, Jack.” She smiled at me. “It's not if, after all, is it. Only when. The readiness,” she added, with a sudden arch lift of her eyebrows, “is all."

  “Sure. But—"

  “Oh, Jack. Do you really think I had my hair bleached this month?"

  I stared at her.

  She said, “Do you know, I'm such a fool, when I first dropped four pounds I was pleased, thought it was the diet."

  “Christ. Not you."

  “Not me? Why not me? Why not Ed? It's all of us. Or—most of us. I said, didn't I, or Shakespeare did, the guy I quoted back there."

  “Yes.” I didn't know, even then, if I believed her, or would let myself. Don't now.

  She came and kissed me, gentle, on the mouth. “I know I can't hurt you."

  “No, you can't. Not that way."

  “Dear Jack. Trust me for this. Ed and I won't fetch up—like those others. Maybe we can even enjoy ourselves a little before—we have to end it. But that's what we'll do. Quietly, here. I know there are no shots, no cure. But there are tablets to make it decent, aren't there, so we can choose. Ed and I discussed it, weeks ago. Of course we did. That's what we'll do."

  “Speak to Henry tomorrow. The tablets. He'll see to it you get the best."

  “Yes, we will. Thank you, Jack. Good bye, Jack. I'll tell Ed so-long for you. Nice—lovely, lovely, Jack, to know you."

  * * * *

  When I went down, the cab was waiting by the sidewalk, and so was the girl with red hair, Gainor Gane Carradene.

  “She's stable,” said the Corp guy. “I checked her out. She's about a nine-monther and holding fine. Brain action's okay. Not pissed and not a crazy. What d'you want I do?"

  “I'll speak to her."

  “I'm right over here."

  She and I walked up the block in the cindery dark between the clear white shine of two street lamps.

  Over there, by now, the discos bellowed. Strobes like Northern Lights in the lower sky. Might have been another planet.

  “Thanks for what you told me before,” she said. “About the time I have left. You know that kind of stuff, I can see."

  “How did you find me?"

  “Followed you. You and the other guy."

  “Why was that?"

  “I don't know.” She raised her beautiful face to look at one single brilliant star high in the aerial corridor between the buildings. “No, I do know. I wondered how you're not afraid of this—of what I've gotten inside me. Because you're not sick, are you—you don't have it?"

  “I don't have Symparasic."

  “So why aren't you afraid? Have they found something that can stop it?"

  “I'm sorry. I told you, not yet."

  “If you aren't cured and you aren't sick—then are you immune?"

  “Yes, Gane,” I said. “In a way."

  “So how?"

  Her face turned to me now, her eyes—not sad or angry, not stupid or scared, or anything at all. Empty, her eyes. Waiting to be filled, only I couldn't fill them. Only the star that was somehow caught in both of them, only the star could do that.

  “I have cancer, Gane. It's terminal. Another conquering colonizer, and too major an outfit for even SPV to fight it and win. They say TB is the same in its advanced stages, and one or two other of the big gun parasites. It tries, SPV, can't get a hold. And no, one won't cancel out the other. I'm on the same highway, Gane. We all are. We all always were."

  * * * *

  Aboard the flight, once we were clear of the locks and covered take-off, out in the liquid night, the human girl came by with snacks and drinks. She looks like a movie star, she has it too. But no one minds. This is a Corp flight, and we all have it here, or something else that won't let it in. And we all know where we're headed and what to do about it. Readiness. Yes.

  So it doesn't matter either when she sees what I'm reading, this wonderful novel, one of the best of the twentieth century. The title doesn't even faze her when she asks, and bends to look. “I read that in high school,” she tells me, and passes on. And I look out the window and watch the city in the tome, one now among seven, soon one among a countless multitude, falling away behind me into the night. Then I go back into the book, which has less to do with any of this than any other thing I can think of. And its name? Everything has to have one. The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Tanith Lee

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  Short Story: UNLIKELY

  by Will McIntosh

  Will McIntosh has sold stories to Interzone, Postscripts, Chizine, Strange Horizons, and other venues. He's been a finalist for both the British Science Fiction Association and the British Fantasy Society awards for best short story of 2005. By day, Will is a psychology professor in the southeastern United States. His wry tale about what life might be like if we really did know how it worked is his first for Asimov's.

  * * * *

  She scanned the diner in that way people do when they're looking for someone based only on a vague description. In this case Samuel knew that the vague description was a tall guy in his late fifties, wearing a jeans jacket. Samuel raised a hand. She waved and headed toward his booth.

  She was skinny, long reddish hair streaked with white. No breasts to speak of, but sexy nonetheless. Not that this was a date.

  “Samuel, hello.” She slid into the seat across from him. They shook hands over the table.

  “Hello Tuesday, nice to finally meet you."

  There was an awkward silence. What did you say in this sort of situation? Had anyone ever been in this sort of a situation?

  A waitress wearing a baseball cap, her ponytail poking through the space in the back, saved the day by taking their order, giving Samuel time to think of something to say.

  “Can you believe this? The whole thing is absolutely staggering nonsense."

  “You think so?” Tuesday said. She canted her head and shrugged. “I don't know. Don't you believe in the numinous?"

  Samuel smiled wanly. “No. I don't believe in the numinous.” The numinous? Who the hell used the word numinous?

  “Hmm. I do. I'd like to be part of something
numinous.” She twisted sideways in the booth, drew one foot onto the red faux leather, and retied the shoelace of her black Keds hightop. She tied enthusiastically; the knot she produced had about six bows. She swapped feet and started working on the other lace.

  “Most people don't realize how important well-tied shoelaces are,” she said. “Shoes ground you—if they're too loose or too tight, or if one is tighter than the other, you're out of balance, and you can't walk true."

  “But you're not walking,” Samuel pointed out.

  “True. But I will be later."

  “Ah.” Samuel was starting to wonder if it had been a good idea to agree to this. She was one of those new age types. Next she'd be suggesting they visualize world peace, or try to channel a dead high priestess of Lemuria.

  “The mayor seems to believe there's something to this,” Tuesday said.

  “He's desperate. Clutching at straws."

  “So why did you agree to meet?” Tuesday asked, her Keds back on the black and white tile floor.

  Samuel paused while the waitress plunked down two glasses, followed by big metal milkshake tumblers. His strawberry milkshake looked as thick as cement. Damn, did he love this place.

  “Professor Berry said there was an easy way to prove him wrong: meet with you on and off for a week. If the city's accident rate didn't go down when we were together, and back up when we were apart, he'd return his consulting fee to the city.” The shake made a satisfying plopping sound as he poured it into the glass. “His ideas are wacked. ‘Data mining for non-intuitive connections'? You can smell the bullshit from three pastures away."

  “You know what I wanted to ask him? How did he know when particular people were in the vicinity of each other?"

  “He monitored license plates. There were surveillance cameras mounted to record the comings and goings of every single vehicle, twenty-four hours a day, for eight months."

  Tuesday was digging through her bowl of sweet-potato fries, tossing one after another into a pile on the edge of her plate. Her arm was dusted with freckles.

  “What are you doing?” Samuel asked.

  “I'm not that hungry, so I'm only going to eat the most attractive ones."