Asimov's Science Fiction (18 page)

I dried myself and dressed, then built a fire, feeling colder than the day.

I have what I came for. I will overturn a generation of received wisdom about bnebene gender and evolution. What we had thought of as a single species is, in fact, several. And they have made themselves several, the ultimate expression of fundamentalism and eugenics.

My reputation will be made. Offers and opportunities will flow. It will be "Goodbye NBU, goodbye backwater." The list of renowned sapientologists will begin "Raffarin, Matsui..."

But what have I let slip away? Where might the clues I've been presented have led me? I showed Bubba and his brothers how to see themselves as individuals and it broke them. Simple as they are, they hadn't the resilience or sophistication to meet the challenge to their fundamental concept of self. Was it evidence of Golovlyov's psychic dividualism? Of the first true hive-mind humanity has encountered in a communicative sapient, or just absolute indoctrination? Might I have loosened some bricks at the base of Raffarin's intellectual edifice, her Universal Metaperson, as Golovlyov so spectacularly failed to do? Was the opportunity there to pull the whole thing down?

Might I still? Perhaps somewhere else, with another Merchanter or Tinker clan. There are experiments that could prove or disprove Golovlyov's theory.

But even if bnebene dividualism is true, could it too be a construct, an artificial veneer over the natural bnebene person? Is that why it shattered so easily for Bubba and his brothers? Do the questions of gender and dividualism converge?

My mobile is blinking beside me as I tap out my thoughts on the interface pad, its memory full of unanswered messages. Those, and the long walk back to Rochefort, can wait until tomorrow.

William Jablonsky is the author of
The Indestructible Man: Stories
(Livingston Press, 2005) and the steampunk novel
The Clockwork Man
(Medallion, 2010). His work has appeared in many literary journals, including the
Beloit Fiction Journal, Shimmer, Phoebe,
and
The Florida Review.
The author teaches at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. His first story for
Asimov's
takes a look at the power of communication over...

8:33 P.M.

Soledad is nervous about putting Oscar to bed, fearful as she is that the world is about to end. She is holding him a little too tight, and he's squirming, which only makes her fight harder to contain him. She's just been on the phone with her mother; the woman's been at her for weeks to hurry up and get Oscar baptized before the world is swallowed up, so his soul will be saved before the end. Considering Soledad's hormone issues, I've looked into changing our number, but that would only help for a day or two. For a second I swear I see her lips move in silent prayer. As far as I knew she was over that silliness, but I suppose this is a special occasion.

Because I cannot stand to see my wife reduced to blithering, I try turning on the TV to distract her. The screen fades in on an affable black man in a black V-neck and camel suede blazer, explaining that the world is not actually going to end tonight— this is something NASA has been planning for years, and the space station astronauts know exactly what they're doing. Other than being a theoretical physicist's wet dream, there will be no impact on us beyond some power surges and pixilated TV screens. We mere mortals will not even be able to see it.

"There," I say. "Feel better?"

I watch her grip on the baby relax, hear her breathing slow. "Yeah," she says. "I think so."

After some coaxing and multiple good-night kisses, she carries him upstairs and lays him gently in his crib. He is almost nine months old now and sleeps through the night, so we can finally relax.

I meet her at the bottom of the stairs with a cup of mint tea. "There now," I say, trying not to sound condescending. "This should help." These days, I even use the wrong intonation and the shit will hit the fan.

She pulls off the purple hair-tie and shakes her long straight black hair loose. She is still tense. The pills her OB doctor prescribed help, but she's always finding something new to worry about: he's crawling like a soldier, dragging his legs limp behind him; he's not babbling yet; he calls us both "dada," robbing her of her special status as life-giver. This week she's worried he's autistic; I've told her it's way too soon to tell, that it's irrational to panic about this yet, but she doesn't listen.

The astronomer on TV reiterates the instructions we've heard for weeks: unplug all unnecessary electronic devices, even the TV and phone, because the EM surge might short them out. Cell phone signals will be garbled at best and might get crossed. (This does not help Soledad's mood.) NASA is sending a probe into the phenomenon, so if there's anything to see, they'll show us when it's over.

We turn off nearly everything but the baby monitor, but when I reach down to unplug the phone, Soledad stops me. "Wait," she says. "What if Nanna falls and breaks a hip?"

"That woman's made of iron," I reassure her. "She'll be fine." At eighty-seven she walks four miles a day and can drink me under the table. But Soledad just stares at me, hands clenched, so I plug the phone back in and try to figure out where I'll buy a replacement when this one shorts out.

With nothing else to do, we sit and wait.

9:38 P.M.

It's begun.

If the astronomer was right, it started twenty minutes ago, and the planet has not been swallowed up. Truth be known, nobody really knows what's going to happen— maybe the probe will go back in time, or run into little green men, or pop out orbiting a parallel earth. Or maybe it's just a really cool thing only astronomers will care about.

Soledad and I are on opposite ends of the red leather couch, sweating because she made me turn off the central air, our legs sticking to the upholstery because of the humidity. We haven't spoken in some time, but this is okay—scintillating conversation was never our strong suit. I pretend to thumb through the L.L.Bean catalog while she sits still as a stone, hands on her knees.

I finally break the silence. "Looks like the world didn't end."

She shoots me a weak smile from one side of her face. "It's not over yet," she says flatly.

I reach over and slide my hand up her thigh. "Well," I say, trying to sound playful, "if we still might die I can think of better ways to spend our last moments."

Lately, this is right about when she brushes my hand off and asks if I'm kidding, but not this time. I lean over to kiss her, first a little peck, then full on. She pulls back for a second and looks at me with dull, tired eyes, then shrugs and pulls my head toward her and kisses me back, hard.

This is good.

A minute later I'm on top of her; our elbows and skin make flatulent sounds on the leather, and she actually laughs with me. I lift up her T-shirt and fumble with her bra. This will be the first time since just after Oscar was born, when she asked me to prove I still found her beautiful. When she found out, that was enough to last her eight months.

I've just gotten it unhooked when the baby monitor beeps to life. Its usual hissing static is rough, like a Geiger counter after a meltdown. We hear coughing, deep in the gut and heavy like a sick dog's bark. A few crackling moans follow—Oscar's voice is deep and heavy and pops with phlegm.

She pushes me off and darts up the stairs.

More coughing. She is halfway up when another voice comes over the monitor: "Jesus," it says. "We'd better get him to the hospital right now." The voice is mine.

She freezes at the top of the stairs.

"Go start the car," Soledad's disembodied voice says over the speaker, and before I can process it she's burst into Oscar's room.

By the time I catch up with her she's standing over the crib, the rotating butterfly lights passing over her in the dark. Oscar is lying on his belly in his white polka-dot summer jammies, backside up in the air. He opens his eyes halfway with a little high-pitched giggle, then closes them again. His breathing is clear and strong.

We back out, close the door, and tiptoe down the stairs. We do not look at one another, or speak, for some time.

Though we've been warned against it, Soledad turns on the TV; every channel is an undulating wave of disconnected pixels. Then she stops on the ABC affiliate; the picture is still distorted, the sound fading in and out, but we can make out the silhouette of Peter Jennings on the screen, reporting that a second plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center.

"Is this a documentary?" she says, but there's no ominous music, no grim voiceover, no commercial break.

I turn off the TV and put my hand on her knee, but she pulls away and it's clear our moment has passed.

"Go ask Dale and Erma if they've seen anything," she commands.

When I stick my head out, Dale is splayed out across his porch swing smoking a blunt, the smoke forming a halo around his silver crewcut. "Anything strange going on over here?" I ask, keeping my voice low. "From the, uh, thing?" I point at the sky.

He shakes his head. "Nope," he says. Until he retired he taught science at the high school where I'm a guidance counselor, so he knows more about these things than me. "Why? You meet yourself from the future or something?" He chuckles. There's no mirth in it. When we first moved in he met us on the front porch with bear hugs; when I told him Soledad was pregnant, he and his son Brian built us a little tire swing in the backyard. But he's been a ghost since Brian was killed by an IED in Kandahar, a little over six months ago.

"Not exactly. Just something... strange."

"Must be nice," he says, finishes the blunt off in one long drag, staring aimlessly into the night.

I go inside.

"Well?" Soledad asks.

I plop down beside her, bouncing on the cushion. "Nothing."

10:32 P.M.

The house phone rings. No one but her parents calls us on the landline. Soledad starts to get up; when I grab her arm to stop her, I can feel the tension all the way up her arm.

"It could be Mom or Dad," she says, shaking. "Something might be wrong."

"Nothing's wrong," I tell her. "You need to take it easy."

She tries to pull away, but I won't let her. "Do you not understand me at all? I can't until I know everything's okay."

"Let it go to the answering machine this one time," I plead, but there's no stopping her. She yanks her arm free and picks up the phone, just before it goes to the machine.

"Hello?" she says. I can't hear much on the other end, just a woman with a nasal, high-pitched voice, calm and officious over the crackling on the line.

Soledad is silent for a minute as the woman speaks. Then she interrupts. "I think you have the wrong number, ma'am," she says. "First of all, it's after ten and Oscar is asleep in his bed. And nine months old." Another long pause. "I feel just fine. I'm looking at the clock right now. Yes, I think you'd better try another number." She hangs up, but instead of coming back to the couch she stands by the phone on the side table, staring at the wall, her arms beginning to quiver.

"What was that all about?" I ask.

She doesn't answer at first. Then she turns, slowly. "That was the nurse at Valley Elementary. She told me Oscar fell off the top of a slide and hit his head. They've called an ambulance."

I get up, put my arms around her. "It's a prank," I insist. "Probably your idiot brother messing with you."

"Well that's just cruel," she says, her voice quivering, mustering all her will to keep from crying. "Why would he do that?" When we were first married she was a warrior woman who did Pilates and ran seven miles a day, and detests how emotional she's become.

"Because he's an asshole." If it is her brother, I swear I'll cripple him.

Two minutes later, her cell phone rings. She doesn't answer until it goes to voice-mail. The message is the same. She tries calling the number, six or seven times, but only gets the voicemail.

"Just relax," I tell her. "Oscar's fine. This is just a prank."

When I finally get her to sit down she is trembling, fingernails leaving little marks in the upholstery.

Finally I speak up. "Maybe you should have a glass of wine," I suggest. "To take the edge off."

"No," she says.

"Suit yourself." I reach over and pick up her cell phone, start to turn it off.

She snatches it away. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Just keep it off, baby," I say, trying to sound as understanding as possible. She isn't listening. She checks her inbox and voicemail to make sure I haven't deleted anything. I sit on the armrest next to her, take her trembling hand.

"You're looming," she says without looking up.

"Tell me what's happening here," I plead. "I don't understand."

She doesn't take her eyes off the phone. "No, you don't. There
has
to be another call now, so I know he'll be okay."

She is clearly somewhere else right now, eyes glistening, rocking slightly on the cushion. She sounds like she's humming a lullaby under her breath. I absolutely cannot handle this shit.

" 'Kay," I mutter. "Suit yourself." I gather my ciggies and shuffle to the door.

Dale is still out on his porch, toking up again. He smokes constantly these days, right out in the open—the cops just let it slide because they all loved him in high school and they know about Brian.

"More weirdness?" he mutters. He nods his head toward the wooden lawn chair beside him; I sit, help myself to a good long toke even though I know Soledad's head will explode when she smells it on me.

"Yeah," I mutter. "Some not-so-good news. Soledad's freaking out. Anything new on your end?"

He shakes his head. "Not a damn thing."

"Be glad," I tell him. "It's driving her up a wall—and she was already halfway there."

Dale leans over and looks at me like my dad about to chide me for scraping up the car. I feel his heavy hand compress my shoulder. "Jimbo," he sighs, "good or bad, it's a gift. Take it for what it is."