Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 (34 page)

"I'm glad to be done with that," said one of the humans. "Those newts are too delicate—I always fear they'll die in the night."

"But necessary, nonetheless," said another human. "She must go slowly upward. Like a diver returning from the depths, she must go slowly."

But already, something else was waiting.

Everything seemed to be clear. Movement was no longer merely an instinctive flailing, as it had been for so long. Instead, it could be a deliberate progression. She could examine obstacles and attempt to surmount them by lifting one leg or the other, or by moving her head from side to side. She could go around, to the left or the right. She could dig. And, most importantly, she could choose which. Somehow, now, she had the capability to decide.

Now, she fed when she was hungry, and not merely when food was available. Leaves of uneaten lettuce lay in the dish where her food was placed. But she would eat it later. Again, her scope had expanded. She felt immense relief at knowing the years that lay before her—the time there was to do what she needed to do. It was because she was protected. If danger threatened, she simply had to retreat into her carapace and wait. She would be safe there, as she had once been safe in the depths of the ocean.

But that—that was confusing. It seemed like a false life. It was better not to think about it.

It was clear now as well that she was in a tank—an enclosure that limited her movement. There was no point in attempting to climb out of the tank. She had tried on each side, and could see that she would never succeed. Sometimes, however, the humans picked her up and placed her outside, on the floor of the room. But even here, she couldn't go far. And there was nothing to eat in the room, no water to swim in, no light to bask in, and no sand to lay eggs in. She preferred the tank in every way, except only that she wished it were larger.

And what of being a safeguard? She dimly suspected these humans were the gods who had placed her where she was. She had those confusing half memories of other bodies and other lives before she had been this tortoise. In those memories, there were humans. It seemed that whatever purpose she served, it must have been ordained by them. And they were always there—or almost always. Every day, she saw one or another of the humans—usually all three of them. Whatever they would want of her, they could find her anytime. She did not need to worry about this either.

Once more, the pebble was free. Suddenly, in her liberation, she knew she was a human too. It hit her suddenly, and it was both a surprise and so obvious in retrospect. She had not been born a coelacanth, nor a newt, nor a turtle. She had somehow, long ago—long, long ago—almost two hundred years ago—she had been born a human, just like these others.

She had been placed in the fish, not as a safeguard, but to be safeguarded. The fish was to safeguard her spark, her essence, through some terrible catastrophe. The fish was to take her through the fire and heat, and then the long coldness that would follow. There had been no room for her elsewhere, with the rest of the surviving humans. But there had been this one last chance, and she had been lucky to have it.

Someone had said the coelacanth had survived this before. If anything could survive again, it would be those sturdy fish. But they would come again later. The humans would return after winter had passed—the very lucky ones would come out of their caves or descend from the sky. They would trawl the oceans and they would pull up their lost cousins, the still-lucky but also not-so-lucky ones who had been given this last bare chance to survive in the depths.

It was a chance only. No one was sure if it would work. It was so far down into the coelacanth and then so far back up again. So many things could go wrong, but it was a chance and it was offered only to a few. To skip the chance was to die alongside billions. So she had taken it, had gone down into the coelacanth, and had lived through the catastrophe and the winter that followed. And here again were her cousins, passing the bright pebble of her soul from body to body to body, as high as they could pass it up, in the hopes they could find her again.

Something was the matter. Something was wrong. In her mind—there was something wrong.

She knew the names of the humans now. Donna, Harold, and George. When one of them pointed at the objects in front of her, she understood what they were asking. She could even hear the words they spoke. She could hear them and remember and repeat them. But it wasn't until one of them spoke the name for the objects that she could speak them back.

If they pointed at the round object first, she could only shift from foot to foot, her head weaving sideways in anxiety. She could only whistle and repeat the question in a nervous parrot's croak. "What is it? What is it?" But once they spoke the word— ball—then she could say it.

"What is it?" asked Harold.

"What is it? What is it?"

"Ball," said Harold, pointing and enunciating.

"Ball," she croaked back, the shame of failure rising inside her.

Why couldn't she say more? She could think now—could reason. She understood so much. When later they pointed to the ball and said "red," she understood that too. It wasn't another name for the object—it was a name for an attribute. It was a category. Things could be classified and categorized. Balls, nuts, humans, pretty birds. She understood it all.

But somewhere, something was wrong. The wiring in her mind wouldn't let her put thoughts into words. There was much she wanted to say—every day, more memories came back. In her sleep, she regressed further and further into her personal history. The turtle and the newt flashed by—the coelacanth persisted seemingly for eons—but there, before it all, was a woman. She remembered what she had remembered. She knew what she had known. Or most of it—much of it. As much as her parrot's mind could comprehend, which was a great deal more than she could express.

And they asked her. They asked: "What is your name?" They asked: "Who are you?"

She saw—she remembered. Not in words, but in images and feelings. And could only shift from foot to foot on her perch. She could only whistle sadly.

Finally, they said: "It isn't working." Not to her—to one another. She wanted to tell them that it was. It was working.

She shifted from foot to foot. She whistled. "Working," she croaked.

"It isn't working," said Harold, absent-mindedly feeding her a nut. "And there is no place else to put her."

"We need this parrot for another one," said Donna. "There are three more tortoises ready to bring up."

"Perhaps it hasn't been long enough," said George.

Everyone looked at him. She looked at him. "Perhaps," she croaked.

She hardly understood what had been missing, but as soon as the salty water touched her gills, she knew. She shivered—not in pleasure, not exactly. She shivered in comfort. In the return of familiar and preferred circumstances. All was now as it should be.

With a twist of her body, she kicked away from the cradle, out in the water. It was too warm and too light here at the surface. She couldn't recall how she had gotten here, but that gave her no anxiety. Even if she had remembered, the string of events would have meant nothing. Why should one thing come before the other? Why should effect follow cause? It was all merely a simultaneous jumble of sensations— strange sensations—sensations best forgotten.

She dove, seeking colder and darker waters, slipping into the depths. She was a safeguard. She must return to her home, for she had been placed there and she was a safeguard. Of the little she knew, that was all she was certain of.

Kim Zimring recently moved from Georgia to Seattle. Her poignant story about an old man's memories of a perilous childhood, however, was written in New Mexico, at Walter Jon Williams's "indisputably fine Rio Hondo workshop." Kim is a graduate of Clarion 2005 and her previous stories have appeared in
Asimov's, Analog,
and the Writers of the Future anthology.

My first memory is of my dead mother. I'm crouched by her face, mouth close enough to kiss, waiting for a breath that never comes. An open jar of mushrooms sits beside her, spoon embedded in its boggy heart. Botulism is the cause of death, I presume, though why I selected that for the image I couldn't say. Some warning about home-canned goods wrapped together in my childish brain with the classic Oedipal love/fear complex: Mother, bringing food and death.

It isn't true, of course. That's always my next thought. Mother died at a hundred-something, better preserved than anything canned in Nazi-owned Vienna. She was never warm to me, certainly, but to translate that to the literal coldness of the grave? It's an image only a Freudian could love.

My wife Lillie scooted a little closer to me on the sofa. She'd been the one who'd spotted the ad in the back of the AARP rag. Art authentication—who'd have thought there'd be money in it for a guy like me?

Given who I'd known when I was a kid, apparently there was a bundle. She'd found that out when she called. Sotheby's got the details and sent a representative right over, to drink tea and perch on our armchair, and offer up a stack of signable forms.

"So this memory projection thing," I say to the rep, after I signed an attestation this, an informed consent that, and settled on the day after tomorrow to come down to their office. "You can tell the difference between real memories and fake ones, right?"

He nodded, fingers flicking through the papers. "Of course." He looked up. "We wouldn't be able to use the memory evidence for authentication purposes if we couldn't."

"Provenance," cuts in my wife Lillie, reading it off the brochure's front page. "That's what you're interested in?"

"Yes, exactly." He stopped, assessed our faces. "Do you know much about the art world?"

"No," I said, though I knew it would annoy Lillie—she hates to look uncultured. Still, I needed to understand this. The auction house had been a little coy on the phone as to what exactly they were looking for.

"Provenance is proving a painting is real, isn't that right? Not a forgery. That's what you're interested in." Lillie folded her hands in her lap. I was impressed. Maybe all those senior trips to museums had paid off.

The rep tilted his head a little, back and forth. "Well, technically
authentication
is the process of proving a painting is by a given artist. Provenance is only one part of the authentication."

"How about looking at the signature? Can't you just do that?" I was feeling ornery, I admit it. Then again, I was the one due to have the contents of his brain projected on the wall. Wasn't I owed a little leeway?

He smiled, conciliatory. "The signature—the attribution—is part of the authentication. Along with brushwork, style, choice of paints—all these things are considered." He leaned forward. "Provenance, though, is needed for a painting to be accepted as an official oeuvre."

"Luck, you mean?" I ask just to be difficult. "God's will? By the hand of provenance?"

"That's provi
dence,"
he said, no annoyance visible at all. Professional. I appreciated that. "This is prove
nance.
It means who owned the picture. An unbroken provenance is best: the artist sold the painting to this person, who hung it in their house for so many years, and then it was sold to this other person—"

"Whose house are you interested in? What ownership?" my wife asked, but I already knew. There was only one person my mother had known who was famous. Only one they would be interested in.

"Freud," I said. "You want to know if I saw a particular painting on Freud's wall." The rep smiled. "That," he said, "is exactly right."

We visited Peter right after that. Rolling hills, green lawns, soft-voiced aides; the Salday Home for Advanced Autism offered a pretty sweet deal from what I could see. I wouldn't talk either, if it meant losing my spot here.

I hadn't chosen this place, of course. Peter is my sister Elsie's son. Ten years younger than me and Elsie kicks the bucket first. I'm the guardian now. A parent, at my age.

We strolled down the pathway, Peter dawdling behind to look at god knew what. Had to be a couple of thousand dollars worth of tulips alone out here, I judged. Heck, who wouldn't be serene, surrounded by this much pricy vegetation?

"Looks like all that money from my memories is going to find a nice home if we keep paying for this place," I said. "Bet it'll be happy. Lots of other greenbacks to play with."

"I think it's nice here," Lillie said. That was as close to arguing as Lillie would ever come.

She doesn't understand autism, though. Not like I do.

I
was
autistic. Seen by Hans Asperger in his little clinic school in Vienna. Worse than Peter, even: I couldn't talk at all.

But I learned how. It took a damn bad scare to force the words out of me, I knew. Coddling didn't work and never would. They don't understand that here.

That's okay. My guardianship, my money, my decision where Peter goes. I'll find a place that can give him that kick in the pants he really needs.

"Think about Freud," the tech said as he flicked on the projector.

The Sotheby's office was all low light and nice reproductions up front. Back here the rooms turned clinical: stainless steel shelving, the tang of disinfectant, dentist-type chairs.

Fine with me. Anything involving my brain ought to be as lint-free as possible, I figured.

The room they deposited us in had a Monet theme. Water-flowers, bridges, sunsets, that kind of thing. Could have been worse. We'd passed a Frida Kahlo room two doors back. Who could concentrate with those eyebrows looming over you?

The tech got me in the chair and gooed my head up, for good conduction. Then he stuck a couple hundred electrodes all over my head. Not painful, just a little itchy, and of course you weren't allowed to scratch.

"Okay," the tech said. "Lean back and get comfortable. You can close your eyes and remember or you can watch what's on the screen. Whatever makes you most comfortable."