Asimov's SF, July 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The people in coats and capes approach in increments, picking new trees much nearer you. They appear devoid of menace, but you think again about fleeing. Even in this twilight, their pastel garments are tinged by the shade thrown by overarching foliage: a disquieting phenomenon.

  Pastel shades, you think. These people are pastel shades.

  Soon your gaze picks up a man approaching steadily through a sycamore copse, a figure in grey twill pants and a jacket the pale ash of pipe dottle. He has boyish features, but crow's feet at his eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard lift him out of the crib of callow naifs. He wears a mild don't-patronize-me smile and doesn't stop coming until he stands less than an arm's length away.

  Ah, Ms. K——, I'm delighted to see you, despite the inauspicious circumstances that bring you here. His elevated vocabulary satirizes itself, deliberately. Call me Father H——. He gives his hand, which you clasp, aware now the pastel holograms beneath the trees have retreated. Their withdrawal has proceeded without your either ignoring or fully remarking it.

  You're not wearing colors, you tell Father H——.

  Tilting his head, he says: Colors?

  A host of pastel shades besieged me just now, but you, well, you wear heartsick grey. To illustrate, you pinch his sleeve.

  Father H—— laughs. Grey's the pastel of black, and I'm a child of the cloth who always wears this declension.

  If you say so, you reply skeptically.

  He chuckles and draws you—by his steps rather than his hand—into the nearest glimmering copse. Tell me about Elise, he says. Tell me all about Elise.

  Later, drained again, you return to the entry clearing still in the father's company, unsure of the amount of time that has passed but grateful for the alacrity with which it has sped. Twilight still reigns in the Arboretum, but the clock-ticks in your heart hint that you have talked with Father H—— forever. You touch his shoulders and yank him to you in an irrepressible hug.

  Thank you, you tell him. Thank you. I may be able to sleep now.

  The grey-clad pastor separates from you and smiles through his beard. I've done nothing, Ms. K——.

  You've done everything.

  His smile turns inward: But I feel like a little boy who makes mud pies and carries them to the hungry.

  * * * *

  Padre H—— takes your plastic card, which he calls a crib sheet, and accompanies you to the Mail Room.

  If you use this thing—he fans himself with the card, like some dowager aunt in an airless August sanctuary—you'll look like a clueless newbie. He chuckles and shakes his head.

  Am I the only one?

  Hardly. Soldiers die every hour. But try to look self-assured—as if you belong.

  The corridor now contains a few used-adult orphans, some walking in wind suits, some pushing mobile IVs, some hobbling on canes or breathing through plastic masks as they enter lifts or try the stairs. None looks self-assured, but all appear to know their way about. None wears an institutional gown, but beiges, browns, and sandy hues characterize the garments they do wear.

  Raw depression returns to knot your stomach and redden your eyes. One or two residents glance toward you, but no one speaks.

  Friendly bunch, you mumble.

  They just don't trust anyone they haven't met, says Father H——. And who can blame them? You could be a security creep or an insurance snoop.

  Carrying these bags?

  What better way to insinuate yourself among them?

  You enter the Mail Room by a door near the screen on the second gallery. This shadowy chamber teems with ranks of rainbow-colored monitors, not with persons, and Father H—— bids you goodbye. (Where is he going? Maybe to hear the confession of a sinful yew?)

  A young person in a milky-orange vest approaches. You can't really tell if she's male or female, but you decide to think of her as a woman.

  May I help you?

  I don't know. I've just come. You hoist your duffels, aware now that they prove absolutely nothing.

  Tell me your name, ma'am.

  You do, and she takes you to a monitor, keyboards briefly, and summons a face-on portrait of Elise in her battle regalia. Several other people sit in this room (you realize now) before pixel images of their dead, trying to talk with them, or their spirits, through arthritic fingertips. You touch the liquid shimmer of the screen with an index finger, and Elise's skin blurs and reshapes after each gentle prod. Your guide asks if you would like to access any family messages in her unit file, for often soldiers leave private farewells in their unclassified e-folders.

  You murmur a supplicating Please.

  A message glows on the monitor: either Elise's last message or the message that she arranged to appear last.

  * * * *

  Dear Mama,

  Do you remember when Brice died? (Well, of course you do.) I recall you telling somebody after they'd shipped Brice's body home, Elise was Mick's and Brice was mine; now I'm forever bereft. You didn't see me in the corner, you had no idea I'd heard.

  From that day on, Mama, I began thinking, What can I do to become yours, if I'm not yours now?

  Then it hit me: I had to change myself into the one you claimed—without betraying Dad or Brice or my own scared soul. So I tried to become Brice without pushing away Dad or undoing myself.

  As soon as I could, I enlisted. I trained. I went where they sent me. I did everything you and they said, just like Brice, and you sent me messages about how proud you were—but also how scared.

  If you're reading this, your fears have come true, and so has my wish to do everything just like Brice, even if someone else had to undo me for me to become just what you loved. With all my heart, I wish you pleasant mourning, Mama, and a long bright day.

  Love,

  Elise

  * * * *

  You read this message repeatedly. You must wipe your eyes to do so, also using the linen tail of your blouse to towel the keyboard and your hands.

  Upsettingly, you have something else to tell Father H—— about Elise, and indeed about yourself.

  * * * *

  The young woman, or young man, from the Mail Room gives you directions to your next stop. You ride a slow glass-faced elevator up two gallery levels to the Guest Suite, which has this legend in tight gold script across its smoky door:

  Grief is a species of prestige.—Wm. Matthews

  A bellhop—or an abrupt young man in the getup of a bellhop—grabs your duffels. I'll take these to the Sleep Bay, ma'am, he says. Stow them there later, under your cot or whatever. And he swings away.

  Old people in brown evening clothes stand at the bar sipping whiskey or imported dusky beer. A gaunt pretty woman detaches herself from the bar and moves insouciantly into your space. Her nose tip halts only inches from your own.

  It's terrible when a child dies, she declares, but people treat you so well, at least for a while.

  You take a step back. Is that right?

  Didn't you find that to be true after your son was killed?

  I suppose. I didn't know much of anything then. I just sort of—You stop, stymied by the task of saying exactly what you found to be true.

  An IED transformed our son into rain. It fell red, you understand, but he scarcely suffered. And afterward—afterward, everyone was very sweet. For as long as they could stand to be, of course.

  You gape at the woman.

  To save him from an IED, I could have used an IUD—but that occasion was so long ago I never imagined a child of mine facing such danger. You just don't think.

  That's true, you reply, because You just don't think rings with more truth than any other utterance out of her mouth.

  (And, by the way, has she just equated an Improvised Explosive Device with an intra-uterine contraceptive?)

  And, she continues, people's kindness toward the bereaved merits our notice and gratitude. She waves at the bar—at the banks of flowers, an alcove of evening clothes, the teeming buffet, a table of architecturally elaborat
e desserts.

  You say: I'd prefer people rude and my children still alive.

  Come now, the woman counters. Bereavement bestows glamour. Pick out a gown, have a dry martini.

  No, you say. You plant a dismissive kiss on the woman's papery brow and weave your way back to the door.

  * * * *

  The nearby glass-faced elevator drops you into the mazelike basement of the Wrong-Way, Used-Adult Orphanage, where you sashay, as if by instinct, to the Chantry. The Chantry now accommodates Father H—— and several old-looking women, virtual babushkas, so unlike the denizens of the Guest Suite that they appear to belong to a different species.

  These women groan on kneelers before the altar at which Father H—— stands, his arms spread like those of the military effigy impaled on an olivewood cross hanging overhead. They wear widows’ weeds, which strain at the seams about their arms, waists, and hips. Maybe the father has shrived them. Now, though, he blesses a monstrance of tiny spoiled rice cakes and a syringe of red-wine vinegar, and moves along the altar rail to dispense these elements.

  Ms. K——, he says upon noticing you: ‘S great to see you again.

  You stand inside the door, appalled and humbled by the warrior Christ floating in shadow above the altar. It wears Brice's face, but also Elise's, and surely the faces of all the babushkas’ lost children. You see that two or three of these wrong-way orphans have stuffed their smocks with tissues or rags, and that a few, whatever their burdens of flesh, look barely old enough to have babies, although they wouldn't be kneeling here—would they?—if that were true. They gaze up raptly, not at the padre but at the suspended effigy: Sacrificer and Sacrificed.

  The father nods a welcome. Care to join these communicants?

  I'm not of your creedal persuasion, Father.

  Oh, but you are, Ms. K——. He gestures welcomingly again. The Church of the Forever Bereft. Come. I've got something better than mud pies. He lifts the chalice and nods at the monstrance: A little better, anyway.

  You walk to the front and kneel beside a woman with a heart-shaped face and the eyes of a pregnant doe. She lays her hand on your wrist.

  Our kids didn't deserve to die, she says. Them dying before us turns everything upside-down. And when our high and mighty mucky-mucks aren't having whole towns blown up, they spew bunkum to keep us quiet.

  Bunk cum? you ask yourself, too confused to take offense. But maybe you should tell the father how you slew Elise.

  Says Father H——: The more the words the less they mean.

  —Yeah, say several women. —We know that's scriptural. —You said a throat's worth. —Selah to that, padre. And so on.

  Let me give you vinegar peace, he interrupts their outburst. Take, eat; take, drink: the flesh and blood of your offspring in remembrance of a joy you no longer possess; in honor of a sacrifice too terrible to share.

  He lays a rice cake on each tongue and follows it with a ruby squirt of vinegar.

  You can hardly keep your head or your eyelids up. The evening—the devastating news—your exile from your life-help cottage—have exhausted you beyond mere fatigue, and you collapse over the altar rail. Father H—— lifts your chin and pulls your lip to give you the elements.

  The babushka with the heart-shaped face braces you to prevent your rolling to the floor. You behold her from one bloodshot eye, knowing you must seem to her a decrepit old soul: a fish with fading scales and a faint unpleasant smell.

  The Eucharist clicks in: You see Brice and Elise as preschool children. In stained shorts and jerseys, they dangle a plump Siamese kitten between them and grin like happy little jack-o-lanterns. Click. In some adolescent year they are videotaping each other with recorders long since obsolete. Then—click—you're gaping at a ticket stub, drawn months later from a jacket pocket, from a ballgame you attended the day before you got word of Brice's death. Click. Elise poses saucily in an ice-green gown with a long-stemmed rose between her teeth. Click. Much too soon: Elise in khaki.

  O God, you say under the floating soldier Christ. Forgive, my children, my failure to march ahead of you....

  * * * *

  Who helps you to the Sleep Bay on an upper gallery you cannot, in your febrile state, tell. But when you arrive, you find this space larger than the fenced-in confines of a refugee camp, with so many used adults milling about that it seems, also, a vast carnival lot. TVs on poles rest at intersections amidst the ranks and files of cots and pallets, most of these showing black-and-white military sitcoms from your girlhood, with a smattering in color from more recent years:

  There's Rin Tin Tin. There's F Troop. There's Hogan's Heroes. There's Sergeant Bilko. There's McHale's Navy. There's Gomer Pyle, USMC. There's M*A*S*H. There's China Beach Follies. There's My Mama, the Tank. There's I Got Mine at Gitmo. There's Top Gun, 2022. There's ... but they just go on and on, the noise of gunshots, choppers thwup-thwuping, IEDs exploding, and combatants crying out in frustration, anger, or pain punctuating almost every soundtrack.

  The young woman—anyway, the young person—from the Mail Room waves at you across an archipelago of pallets.

  Ms. K——! she shouts. Over here, over here!

  And you stagger toward her through the crowds, past heaped and denuded cots, past old folks and younger folks: some blessedly zonked, some playing card games like Uno, Old Maid, pinochle, or Cut Throat, and some gazing ceiling-ward as if awaiting the Voice of God the Freshly Merciful. One bearded old guy chunks invisible missiles at the actors in I Got Mine at Gitmo.

  Barely upright, you make it to the person who called to you.

  These are your duffels, she says. This is your pallet—unless you'd like to look for something nearer a wall.

  Where are the restrooms?

  She points. Through there, Ms. K——. You peer down a crooked aisle of bedding at a wall of wrong-way, used-adult orphans obstructing any view of the lavatories she has tried to point out. I know, I know: Just walk that way and ask again.

  No, you say. No. You crawl onto the raised pallet—it's resting on a pair of empty ammo crates—and curl up in a fetal hunch between your duffels. The woman, the person, touches your shoulder gently, and departs.

  Before you can fall asleep, a line of people forms in the aisle. Your pallet rests at its head while its tail snakes back into the depths of the bay like a queue from Depression Era newsreels.

  Everybody has photographs or image cubes of their slain warrior children, and as the line advances the people in it squat, kneel, or sit to show them to you, even though you see in each face either Brice's or Elise's, no matter how minimal the resemblance or how weary your vision.

  —Very pretty. —Very handsome. —A smart-looking fella. —What a shame you've lost her. —How can he be gone? —Golly, what a smile...!

  You compliment ten or twelve orphaned parents in this way until your tiredness and the faces of Brice and Elise, rising through the images of these other dead children, make it impossible to go on. Still horizontal, you press your palms to your eyes and shake like a storm-buffeted scarecrow.

  Leave her alone, somebody says. For Pete's sake, let the woman rest.

  A hand shoves your head down into your rough olive-green blanket, but the voice that you attach to the hand's body roars, Heal, O Lord, heal! Take her hurt away tonight, and torment her no more!

  But you don't want that. You don't. All you want is sleep and the honest-to-God resurrection of three particular persons, but sleep is all you're likely to get. Somebody big perches on the pallet edge and lullabies in a guttural whisper All the Pretty Little Horses; he kneads your spine with fingers that feel more like metal bolts than flesh and bone. And despite the Sleep Bay's din and stench (and despite the hole in the middle of your chest), you drift down into a Lost Sea of Consciousness and let go of all pain but a last acrid fuse of heartbreak....

  * * * *

  A twin rumble ghosts through the Sleep Bay, an outer one from the old orphans waking to face their pain afresh and an inner one from your co
mplaining gut. You sit up and peer about at this new Reality.

  The lavatories have to be packed—so, casting about for a solution, you find a wide-mouthed jar inside one of the crates supporting your pallet. After shaping a tent with your blanket, you relieve your bladder—no easy task—into the jar and stand there amidst the chaos wondering how to proceed.

  Slops! Slops! cries an electronic voice, and a simulacrum of a person, smaller than the small cruel man who helped transport you from your life-help cottage, rolls through the crowd with a slotted tray hooked to its midsection.

  It takes jars, bottles, beakers, and suchlike from other bleary residents and rattles them into the partitioned tray going before it like an antique cowcatcher. You hand over yours uncertainly.

  The simulacrum—a dormitron or a refectorian, depending on its duty du jour—asks what you'd like for breakfast. You recoil at taking anything edible from this rolling slops collector, but say, Some toast, I guess, it really doesn't matter, to keep from stalling it by saying nothing. It rolls on.

  Another refectorian—for at mealtimes the Sleep Bay becomes the Refectory—cruises up behind a serving cart, the cart a part of its own fabricated anatomy, and lets you fumble at its topmost shelf for a cup of tea and a slice of toast and persimmon jam. Other such simulacra tend to others there in the bay, sometimes dropping plastic crockery or spilling sticky liquids. From a few pallets away, a woman as thin as a spaghetti strap sidles into your space.

  What did your children like to eat? she asks.

  Ma'am?

  Your dead kids—what'd they like to eat? You can get it here, whatever it was. I always do—what mine ate, I mean. I eat it for them and feel connected to them the rest of the hideous day.

  Our son liked cold pizza, our daughter even colder fresh fruit.

  Want me to get you tidbits of those things?

  You hesitate.

  The strap-thin woman mumbles into a diamond of perforations on her inner wrist. They're on their way, she tells you afterward.

  And so you wind up with two slices of cold garbage-can pizza and a bowl of even colder cantaloupe, pineapple, muskmelon, and kiwi wedges, which you down between bites of pizza. Your benefactor watches in approval, then asks you to tell a breakfast story about Brice and Elise.