Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 (16 page)

"History is built on conundrums, not answers. Whatever the reason, that young fellow was filled with withering rage. He didn't just hate this one despicable girl, but all women and all that they stood for. One morning in 1877, while the entire campus was sitting upon this floor, enjoying chapel, the ex-soldier soaked a mattress with kerosene and dragged it into the basement beneath the only stairs, and then he set the mattress on fire. There it smoldered and flared before choking on its own black smoke. If it hadn't choked, the building would have burned. The stairs would have ignited and collapsed, and the trapped women would have had to leap three stories to the ground, and those that didn't die from the fall or smoke or flames would have been crippled. But thankfully, with God's blessing, the mattress failed in its mission, and the college survived that disaster, and of course the dangerous man was hunted down and executed, while his brothers were told that their presence was no longer welcome here."

For a moment, Hedgewick glanced at the hallway. Quentin barely noticed, leaning forward now, elbows on knees, waiting for whatever this sage said next.

"I have given that mattress quite a lot of thought." Eyes turned to the floor, picturing a rectangle of fabric and padding. "Instruments of mass murder aren't selected by chance. I wouldn't be surprised if that mattress had significance to his life and his sickness. Which is another example of our human tendency to let ourselves be wrapped inside our symbols, crippling our ability to act effectively in pursuit of our interests, whether they are worthy or disgusting."

Hedgewick's eyes looked up, looked at Quentin. "Passion can be dangerous. We know this too well. If you manage to reach my age, son, you may appreciate just how perilous human nature can be. Yet at the same time, it must be said that because passion is incoherent and clumsy, and it is inefficient on its most dangerous day, for those reasons we have been saved endless times. Yes, saved. Spared. Because if we were machines, machines blessed with rational, eff icient mechanical minds, we would have met every enemy with perfect campaigns, and only the perfect few would survive. Or more likely, one machine would have prevailed, and where would be the success in that?"

The lecture was finished. The pause said so, and the way the professor leaned back in his groaning chair said so, and then the same crooked finger turned the dial on his little radio while he pushed the earpiece back where it belonged. Glancing at Quentin once more, joy buoyed the smile. "She's waiting for you, you know."

Quentin sat straight up in the chair.

Then the small hand dropped on his shoulder, and into his right ear, Sandra whispered, "There you are."

She claimed his hand when they reached the hallway and dropped it again once they were inside her office, and they stood a long step apart, staring at each other. Sandra's mouth was half open. She was breathing quickly, and the oyster glasses were dirty enough to show smudges, and she wasn't pretty. She looked tired and grimy, her hair matted by oil and crumbs clinging to the blue shirt and the thin makeup smeared above her red left eye. Her peculiarly intense gaze made Quentin expect that she was going to leap at him.

But whatever the urge, it suddenly left her. Pointing to a short sofa, she said, "Sit."

He sat. The room was smaller than her colleague's, the shelves fewer, but just as many volumes filled crevices and odd crannies. Her books were newer and brighter than Hedgewick's, yet the subjects were far more ancient. Papers and folders were stacked on the desk and two separate tables, and still more books were mixed into that purposeful mayhem. This was a busy library. Millions of words waited to be gathered inside the mind of a person, and that odd thought made Quentin happy, happy enough that he didn't have room to think anything else.

Sandra settled behind her desk.

"What are we doing?" he asked.

"I'm waiting," she announced.

He nodded.

She studied him, a half-smile tinged with caution.

"I wanted to tell you," Quentin began. "The other day, I read something interesting about Venus."

Her caution dissolved into a clear, urgent feeling. She said, "I just remembered."

"What?"

"Why I'm angry with you."

Quentin wanted to go outside and lie down. He wanted ravens to dig the eyes out of his skull.

Then a phone began to sing, four notes sounding, and after the pause, the notes began all over again. The telephone wasn't in Sandra's office, yet the woman seemed keenly interested. When the ringing stopped, she leaned forward with eyes opened and her top lip curled back over her hard little teeth.

Hedgewick had interrupted the melody. "Hello?" And then a moment later, "Hello there?"

Now Quentin was listening, as if nothing else in the world mattered.

"No, I'm sorry," the old man said. "You have a wrong number."

Sandra rose, calling out, "What number did they want?"

"Five-oh-five," the old professor answered.

She walked to the closest table. Behind a stack of books was a small white sack, and with a distracted air, she glanced at Quentin. Was he still here?

"I forgot to do something," she lied.

He nodded.

"An errand."

"Okay."

"You should go home," she said.

Quentin wanted her to come home with him, but honesty would reveal a sex-crazed monster and that is why he lied.

"I want to go with you," he told her.

She wouldn't let him. Quentin understood that.

Yet Sandra didn't let herself think, happiness making her unusually bold.

"All right then," she said quietly, surprising both of them. "Come meet my son."

The Trailbreaker coughed before finding its breath, and Sandra pulled onto the road, looking in every mirror as much as she looked ahead.

Little neighborhood roads took them north.

Quentin didn't ask for explanations or instructions. He turned in the seat, and life's only purpose was to watch what was behind them. The only trailing car was tiny and light blue—not the kind of vehicle he expected from the Federals. But just when the vehicle seemed to follow them too closely, it turned and vanished inside an open garage.

Quentin buried his questions. He was feverishly curious about Theo and his circumstances and how these occasional, apparently random meetings were organized. But he wanted to be a minion, and those duties included remaining usefully ignorant. Little dramas played out in his head, and they were just that: Play. The police were big men and acidic little women, and nobody could break him, and even if he was broken, he knew nothing nothing nothing that could injure anyone.

Then the daydream police started to beat him with lacrosse sticks, and he lost control of the daydream.

Quentin looked forward.

Sandra was just as silent and just as nervous as he was, but her nerves carried more anticipation than fear. She clung to the big steering wheel. Every purple stoplight was obeyed, every corner needed three looks. She crossed railroad tracks on a battered road and then slipped across Highway 7. A little car dealership passed by, and repair shops and warehouses, and then there was nothing but the asphalt road leading to hills and open countryside. Quentin assumed they were heading for farm country and an isolated field, but Sandra fooled at least one person. They crossed Wolf Woman Creek and then turned right and right again, using a rutted lane and a narrow, plainly substandard bridge to cross the water again.

"Did you see the flag?" she asked suddenly.

"What flag?"

"On the windshield. In the car lot on Bernice."

He hadn't.

"It was there," she assured. "And that's where Theodore is."

"Okay. Good."

She drove faster, laughing softly. "Maybe someday," she began, and then her mind shifted subjects.

"Someday what?"

"I'll teach students how to confound authority figures." She laughed and cuddled with the wheel. "Would you take a class like that?"

"From you."

"Theo and I have techniques, tricks. And they've worked for more than two years now."

Quentin was growing more uneasy than he was interested.

"I don't talk about my son at home."

"People are listening."

"I assume lurking ears, yes." She glanced at him, measuring his mood. "It's the same with phone calls, of course."

Quentin shifted in the old car seat. "What about this car?"

Sandra took her foot off the gas, letting the Trailbreaker roll up to the next unmarked intersection before turning right again. "There's a microphone in the dashboard and it's tied into the antenna, and no, I'm not worried. The bug was planted last year. I know when it happened and where, and I've rewired it. When my car runs, the radio plays directly into the transmitter. Eavesdroppers have to endure songs that an old lady would love."

Quentin stared at the menacing dashboard.

"Do you know how many men evade the draft?" she asked.

"Not really."

"Nobody does. Different agencies, different calculations. Federal Intelligence has theirs, the public Freedom-Servers another. Strong Shores is supposed to have the most resources and make the best estimates, but their numbers are always inflated. It helps to scare the public, filling the hills with wild horny men who live off deer meat and their hatred of the government. Which feeds their budget, of course."

"What's your number?"

"One third of one percent," Sandra answered. "Those are the eligible draftees trying to evade service."

The long spring dusk was finished. They finally turned left, heading back into the city. But night had closed in behind them, and remembering his solemn duties, Quentin looked out the back window, nothing to see but smothering, impenetrable shadows.

"One third of one percent means too many bodies to chase," she allowed. "Plus there's a cost involved in finding every young man who refuses. Police time and court time. Cowardice isn't one of the movements that terrifies the government, so they let it continue without too much of a fight."

Piecing together the logic, he asked, "Is Theo a coward?"

Sandra shifted her body, and a tight voice said, "Dissent is a different crime."

Quentin regretted his words.

Quietly, with deep feeling, she said his name. Then she turned to look at him, waiting for his eyes to find her.

They were still moving, but nobody was looking forward.

"What?" he asked.

Sandra reached in the darkness, her arm too short to touch his leg.

"Dissent is the opposite of cowardice. Dissenters don't want big armies, and they're willing to risk everything to keep the world from being torched by tritium bombs."

Quentin could think of nothing worth saying.

And Sandra finally looked ahead, touching the brakes. A big lot filled with used cars and trucks was passing on the right, and she glanced down one row, tapping the brakes, and studied the parked cars. Then they began to accelerate, eyes forward, her rump squirming painfully.

"What?" Quentin asked.

She said nothing.

He started to look back.

"Don't," she warned.

They drove to the next light, waiting for the purple to change to gold, and she didn't say anything, pulling the white sack onto her lap, holding it and the secret gifts with one hand while her face looked sorrowful, unblinking eyes making tears.

The light changed.

She drove.

"What's wrong?"

"The flag's gone."

He stared at the dash.

"Theo saw something. He got worried." She tried to shrug, looking at Quentin, one hand high on the wheel while the voice struggled to remain strong. "He's careful and knows not to take chances. And this happens, sometimes."

Quentin said, "Good. That's he's careful."

She looked forward, at last. "Can I drop you at your house?"

He didn't answer.

She said his name again.

He whispered, "I've missed you."

Sandra heard him or she didn't. Either way, they continued south while she gasped softly, wiping her eyes with the sack, letting herself settle into a familiar gray pain.

They were watching the world, waiting to see if anyone out-of-place parked on her street.

"That happens?" Quentin asked.

"But they could be suspicious of my neighbors. How would I know?"

Sandra grabbed the mail from its blue box and unlocked the front door, and then they were inside, surrounded by electronic ears, by paranoia. A person had to be fiercely brave to push through this kind of life without collapsing. The house lights were left off. Heavy machinery rumbled outside, which seemed ominous, but it was just a moving van passing, oxen and a wagon logo painted on its long side. Sandra pulled open the curtains and stood at the window, and Quentin stood with her. She wasn't calm. It took work to keep her hands still. But no strangers were lurking, and then just as she began to step back, a single sedan roared into view, highway headlights blazing.

Quentin had never seen any car drive so fast on a residential street. Someone was terrified or crazy or drunk, but before the shock struck either of them, the car was gone.

Assuming someone was chasing the driver, they waited a little longer. But no second vehicle appeared, and this was another one of those minor mysteries that life collected day by day until its end.

"I need to wash up," Sandra said.

They leaned toward each other.

"And I'm hungry," she said.

Quentin realized he was famished.

Sandra went into the kitchen. Accustomed to a boy's appetite, she made three breadwraps with ghee and cold quail and peppers, the smallest of the wraps reserved for her. Then they sat on the sofa, eating while watching the empty street.

"Oh, I forgot," she said. "Venus. You were going to tell me—"

"It may have life," Quentin said. "Last year, the Europan Space Administration dropped in their probe, but they announced the results this week. On its way through the upper atmosphere, where the pressure and temperatures resemble those on earth, the sensors found an abundance of bacteria-sized particles."