Asimov's SF, September 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  * * * *

  First it was like a job interview. I sat across from a woman of middle years. She wore a pearl-gray suit, glasses with red frames, and what looked like a lacquered chopstick stabbed through the hair bun at the back of her head. In between questions and answers I entertained a fantasy about grabbing that chopstick and busting out of the Federal Building, Matt Damon-Bourne style.

  Her questions turned strange and personal, and I knew I was being given a psych evaluation. I began to guard my responses. Which was pointless. Those tests anticipate and integrate prevarication. She asked about dreams. I made one up about a three-legged dog but kept the recurring one about my mother's birch to myself.

  Finally CHOPSTICK LADY (keep objectifying everyone and pretty soon it will be safe to start shooting) put her pad down and folded her hands over it.

  “Mr. Skadan, I'd like you to sign an authorization paper. You aren't obligated to sign it, of course. You are not under arrest or accused of a crime. But it is in your best interests to sign—and, I might add, the best interests of the United States, and perhaps the world community."

  “If I'm not under arrest, why did I have to come here?"

  “You're being detained."

  “What's the difference?"

  “A matter of degree and duration."

  She removed a document from her briefcase and pushed it across the table.

  “This authorizes us to subject you to a technique called borderlanding."

  “I need a cigarette."

  She shook her head. “I'm sorry."

  “What's borderlanding?"

  “A variation on sleep deprivation methods used to extract information from enemy combatants. Of course, for borderlanding purposes it's been modified. The object is to produce a state of borderland consciousness without the use of drugs."

  While she spoke I scanned the document.

  “But I don't have any information,” I said.

  “Borderlanding isn't to extract information, Mr. Skadan; its purpose is to draw out the Harbinger we suspect may be hiding in your unconscious mind."

  “Come on."

  “I am perfectly serious."

  “What if I don't sign?"

  “After a couple of days of close observation you will be free to go. But under provisions of the Modified Patriot Act the proper government agency will keep you under surveillance for an indefinite period of time. And, of course, your employer will be notified."

  I signed.

  * * * *

  They kept me in a room with a table and a couple of hard chairs. My head was rigged with a Medusa's tangle of wires. The wires ran into a junction box that fed data to a lab monitor somewhere. The light was bright and never went off. If I started to drift, loud music blasted into the room, or somebody came and pestered me.

  “How are we doing, Joe?” A baldish guy with a corporate look asked me. His security badge identified him as Gerry Holdstock. Gerry.

  “I'd like a cigarette is all."

  “It's a non-smoking building, sorry. I want you to know we appreciate your cooperation. Borderlanding is the most promising method we've yet devised for isolating these anomalies. I do understand it's uncomfortable for you."

  “I don't believe in Harbingers,” I said, rubbing my eyes. I'd been awake for two days.

  Gerry smiled.

  “Which is part of the problem with outing them,” he said.

  “How many have you outed so far?"

  “That's classified. Joe, let me ask you a question.” He leaned over me, one hand flat on the table and the other on the back of my chair. His breath smelled like wintergreen. “Do you have any idea how many people have disappeared without a trace since the Harbinger Event?"

  “How many?"

  “I can't tell you. But it's more than you think."

  “Well, I haven't disappeared."

  “Not yet. But you've been identified as a potential mp. We've discerned a pattern in these disappearances. The first to go are marginal types on society's fringes, the mentally ill, disaffected artists, failed writers. One will vanish from the face of the earth, followed by mass vanishings of normal people. We have a computer model. And consider this. If you do disappear, you might be missed by friends and relatives” (his tone indicated that he doubted it), “but your absence would be absorbable without ripples of any consequence. Now imagine if someone important disappeared. Imagine if the President of the United States disappeared."

  “A disaster,” I said. “By the way, who identified me as a potential?"

  “I'm afraid that's privileged information.

  “Whatever."

  Gerry patted my shoulder

  “Hang in there."

  * * * *

  I didn't know about Harbingers, but if they wanted a zombie they wouldn't have long to wait. My head dropped. Audioslave blasted on the speakers. It didn't matter; I felt myself slipping away. Then the music stopped. Sensing someone present, I managed to raise my head. The door remained shut, but Nichole was standing in front of it.

  “Hello, Joe. Want to go for a walk with me?"

  “Too tired."

  “You're not tired at all."

  She was right. There was a moment when I felt like I was supposed to be tired, exhausted to the point of collapse. It was almost a guilty feeling, like I was getting away with something. Nichole crossed the room and stood beside me, offering her hand.

  “Ready?"

  The corridor was deserted. We entered an elevator. There were only two buttons, both unmarked. Up and Down? Nichole pushed the bottom one.

  “Where are we going?"

  “Someplace safer to talk,” she said.

  After a moment the doors slid open. Beyond was a parking lot and a burger joint, an Arctic Circle, with the big red, white, and blue sign and the chicken or whatever it was, the corporate mascot. I recognized it because I'd seen a run-down version of it once on a road trip to Spokane. My mother had pointed it out. It was just like the one she used to work in. “Better than MacDonald's and the best soft ice cream!"

  “What is this?” I said.

  “A safer place. Come on."

  Nichole pulled me across the parking lot, my shoes scuffing the asphalt. It was night. A few cars of sixties and seventies vintage gleamed under bright moonlight. Too bright, really. The moon was at least twice its normal size, bone white, so close I could discern topographical detail. India ink shadows poured over crater rims. There was a pinhead of color in the Sea of Tranquility. I looked back but the elevator, not to mention the Federal Building, was gone. We entered the shiny quiet of the empty restaurant and sat in a booth.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “A girl named Nichole."

  “How do you pull off all these tricks?"

  I reflexively patted my breast pocket, knowing there were no cigarettes there. But I felt a pack, pulled it out, and looked at it. Camel Filters, half empty, with a book of matches tucked into the cellophane sleeve.

  “You did that one,” Nichole said.

  “What one?"

  “The cigarettes are one of your tricks. I don't smoke."

  I twisored one out and lit up.

  “This place is one of your ‘tricks,’ too. You've never had a safe place, Joe, so you borrowed one of your mother's. I've been borrowing it, too, to help me understand you better. We haven't much time, so I'm going to give you the Reader's Digest version of what's going on."

  I held hot smoke in my lungs, then released it slowly.

  “Go ahead."

  “Okay. They got it wrong. Earth is the center of the Universe. At least the self-aware consciousness that has evolved there informs the emerging pan-universal consciousness. Now think of an egg timer."

  She picked one up that may or may not have been sitting next to the napkin dispenser a moment before. She cranked it slightly and set it down ticking.

  “Transphysical ego-consciousness is the egg,” she said.

  I regarded my Camel. My mind f
elt uncharacteristically sharp, lucid, but I knew it was unraveling in delusion.

  Nichole said, “The timer started when the first inklings of self-awareness appeared. And at a certain moment—"

  The timer went ding!

  “—the tipping point of human evolutionary consciousness arrives. A handful of individuals are on the leading edge. I'm one. You're another. It's pretty random as far as I can tell."

  There was a sound in the kitchen, like someone moving around. We both looked toward the service window behind the counter, but it was dark back there, and quiet again.

  “So,” I said, “who are the Harbingers supposed to be then? Not that I believe in them, or you, or any of this."

  She smiled.

  “They're definitely not alien invaders. In fact they might be us, some unconscious projection of our desire toward growth and freedom. Or maybe they are a transdimensional race with a vested interest in seeing us successfully evolve forward. It isn't a foregone conclusion that we make it, you know."

  “Isn't it."

  “Are you okay, Joe?"

  I looked at her through a veil of blue smoke. Past my personal tipping point, likely.

  “If we fail to advance,” she said, “so does the conscious universe. Everything stagnates and begins a long devolution into separate numbered worlds of barbarism. The long decline."

  In the kitchen, a utensil clattered to the floor. Nichole said, “Uh-oh."

  I started to stand but she shook her head.

  “What?” I said. “I thought you said this place was safe."

  “Safe-er."

  I rubbed my eyes.

  “You're on the brink,” she said, “but if you let your fears and neuroses and paranoia dominate, you could create a Dark World that will pull in weaker egos. That's why this is so important."

  I made a sketchy pass with my cigarette. “Draw them into the great sucking pit of my neuroses."

  “It's happened so many times already, Joe. We only need a handful to swing the balance toward positive evolution."

  “How many have you got so far?"

  “One, counting me."

  I laughed. She did, too. We were down the rabbit hole together, if she even existed.

  “Would it be so bad to believe me, Joe? To believe in me? At least consider the possibility. Thousands have disappeared into the Dark Worlds of a few. I need you to help me counterbalance things. You're lucky. It's a choice you get to make."

  “Order up!” somebody yelled. That voice.

  I stood up facing the kitchen. Suddenly I was cold. Fluorescent lights began to flicker and a scarecrow shape stuttered into view.

  “Sorry, Joe,” Nichole said, and she pushed hard at the base of my skull, a sharp locus of pain. I faltered, reached back, and found myself sitting on a hard chair in the interrogation room. I blinked, my head still aching. The door opened and Gerry walked through with a lab tech in blue scrubs.

  “Was I asleep?” I said, my voice a toad's croak.

  “Just drifting, Joe."

  The tech delicately removed the skull patches. I looked at Gerry. “I'm done?"

  “Three days. It's as far as we can go under the current charter."

  “What'd you find?"

  “Nada."

  * * * *

  I slouched up Broadway in hazy sunlight, exhausted. Back in the numbered world. My eyes felt grainy and my head pounded. As I attempted to go around HOMELESS VET he grabbed my ankle.

  “I served my country!"

  “I'm broke,” I said.

  “Come on, Joey. The End is near, give me some change."

  His voice had altered, and the bones of his face under the beard.

  Paul Newman eyes.

  I fled.

  My apartment was dark. I racked up the shades. Daylight penetrated feebly through the dusty pane. I picked up the phone, dialed Cheryl's number. Because she was the only person who knew me and I was afraid. The only real person. It rang three times before I hung up. I couldn't reach out to her, not through the fog of betrayal. I just couldn't.

  The light grew dimmer. Perhaps a cloud had passed before the sun. I contemplated the cheap automatic, a big change hurtling toward me. It wasn't about wanting it or not wanting it. Perhaps it spun forth from my own spider-gut psyche.

  I removed my shoes and socks and lay down on my bed. Time passed but I didn't sleep. The room darkened into night. There was a rustling sound. I opened my eyes. Mom's birch stood at the foot of the bed, 2001 obelisk style. I clicked on the lamp and sat up, then knelt on the mattress and reached out. Okay, a dream. My fingers touched the white skin. My thumbnail dug in, making an oozing green crescent. I pulled a ribbon of bark away, and my mind flooded with a child's innocent expectations. I crushed them before they could hurt me.

  Sirens wailed on Broadway. I grabbed the pack of cigarettes off the bedside table and lit up. Go away, I said to the tree. It didn't. I swung off the mattress and went around to the foot of the bed. The roots were like long bony fingers melded into the floor. The only important philosophical question is whether or not to lose your mind.

  THE EXHIBITIONIST sat on her bed with her head between her knees, hair straggling down. It looked like an orange prescription bottle on the mattress beside her, but it was so far away I couldn't be certain. I was seeing her with normal vision now; she had emerged into objective reality, or objective reality had warped and enclosed us both.

  The .38 was in my hand before I was aware of reaching for it. The only important philosophical question is what took you so long. In my bedroom Mom's tree wilted. The leaves drooped, some had gone brown and crisp around the edges.

  I left my apartment. The door across the hall stood open a crack. You always get a choice, even at the end of things. To give him belated credit, Charlie had chosen not to shoot into the closet. I pushed the door inward on the empty apartment. A peculiar cold light shone out of the kitchen, glaring on a drift of dust.

  I heard a sound and looked to my left. THE MANAGER stood at the end of the hall, frozen, with a fistful of keys. Probably it was the gun that froze him. I should have put it down before coming out.

  “You better leave,” I said, frightened for him.

  “I don't think so, kid."

  When did the keys turn into a belt? The buckle gleamed dully. “You aren't there,” I said, and crossed into the empty apartment. The light drew me to the kitchen. My feet were bare. The dust was hot and had the texture of talcum powder. The dust and the peculiar light came from the open refrigerator, which was empty and deep, a Narnia passage to a brilliant desert landscape under a black sky.

  I sat on a kitchen chair to finish my cigarette. Heavy boot treads approached out in the hall. The leather belt whip-cracked. Okay, Charlie. I gripped the gun tighter. But who knew what would come through the door? A figment, a neurotic fear, a fat apartment manager in the wrong place at the wrong time. I smell smoke, my stepfather's voice said outside the empty apartment or inside my head. And where there's smoke there's fire.

  The cigarette dropped from my lips. I raised the gun. But as he came through the door, a shifting thing, I turned away from him and lurched into the Narnia passage. It was narrow as a closet. At first the way was clear. But as I hunched forward my progress became impeded by hanging pelts thick with the stench of old blood. I shoved through them now, crying, and at last came into the open.

  * * * *

  The Earth was a big blue and white bowling ball, just like all the astronauts used to say. I strolled barefoot in the hot regolith and dropped the gun, which was no longer heavy. She was waiting for me at the Arctic Circle, just a girl named Nichole. Delusions are like mosaics assembled from the buckle-shattered pieces of your mind. A tree, a restaurant, a dreaming sky, the pretty girl you never knew.

  “Okay,” I said. “I'm here."

  Nichole smiled. “Good. We have a lot of work to do."

  She was right about that.

  Copyright © 2006 Jack Skillingstead

 
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  * * *

  PRIMATES

  by David D. Levine

  David D. Levine's first story for Asimov's SF, “Tk'tk'tk” (March 2005), is currently a finalist for the Hugo award. While that story gave us an insight into alien intelligence on a distant planet, this tale allows for similar insights much closer to home.

  I picked up the phone on the third ring. “Woodland Park Zoo, primate section. Ed Vick speaking."

  “Uh, yeah, my name is Dan Stark, I'm calling from Staircase, and I wanted to talk to someone about a ... a gorilla. Or something.” The voice was deep, gravelly, and seemed a bit slurred.

  “You're calling from ... Staircase?"

  “Yeah. The town of Staircase. In the Wonder Mountain Wilderness. On the, y'know, Olympic Peninsula."

  “Okay...."

  “Anyway, there's a gorilla, or some other kind of monkey, that's been digging in my garbage. I was wondering if the zoo might want it. To ... to buy, or something."

  “Well, Mr. Stark, zoo policy is not to purchase animals from private collectors."

  “Uh."

  “But,” I continued, “if you seriously believe you have a gorilla on the loose there, we might be interested in sending someone to investigate. Privately held gorillas do sometimes escape from their owners, or are abandoned, and they can become a danger to themselves and others. So we would want to check it out, and if it really is a gorilla we would work with the local animal control agency to bring it in."

  “Is there, a ... like a reward or something?"

  “I'm not sure about that, but there might be a small finder's fee."

  “Uh, okay. What do I need to do?"

  “Why don't you start by describing the situation to me?"

  Stark—"call me Dan"—explained that his garbage heap was behind a chain-link fence, to keep out bears and raccoons, but something was opening the gate and ransacking the heap. He had spotted the creature on two occasions, and described it as “bigger than a cougar, but smaller than a bear, and it moved funny."

  My first impulse was to dismiss the call as a prank or mistake, but Dan seemed sincere, and if there really were a gorilla wandering the Olympic Peninsula it would be criminal to leave it out there.