Asimov's SF, October-November 2011 (20 page)

is a wrenching heavy metal refrain

framed by the crescendo and

decrescendo of screeching chords

—

as each incarnation transpires

with the rising of the moon

and is reversed in its falling.

—

The music of werewolves

is rife with a raucous chorus

of howls and blasphemies,

—

a scherzo of wilding violins

and pounding kettle drums

in a thunderous blood beat.

—

It is burning-full-moon music,

rich in claw and fang and drool

and the rampaging hunt,

—

a savage onslaught in which

all of your rage can be released

and your basest hunger sated.

—

Yet when silence returns,

you can never remember

a single note.

—Bruce Boston

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A few months ago, Eugene Mirabelli was delighted to learn that he had been given a vodka toast on his eightieth birthday by a group of SF writers who were gathered around the editor of
Esli
—the distinguished Russian science fiction magazine. Gene's latest novel,
Renato, The Painter,
will be out soon from McPherson & Co., publishers. In addition to his fiction, the author writes journalistic pieces on society, politics, and culture for an “alternative newsweekly.” For some years he presided over the website
Critical Pages,
and recently resurrected it as a place to post his grumpy articles on economics. In his second story for
Asimov's,
Gene charms us with this tale of an unlikely quartet.

1

One Monday morning Samantha discovered that when the kitchen faucet was running it made strange new sounds. “Wow, the kitchen faucet sounds different,” she told Cy. “Listen."

He paused and listened. “It sounds all right to me,” he said. He resumed briskly buttering his toast.

She turned off the water. “It didn't used to make those sounds,” she said, puzzled. Samantha had been renting the little flat for two years.

"It sounds the same as always,” Cy said. He had moved in with her a month ago. “Sounds just like water coming out of an old faucet—burble, burble, burble.” He raised his empty coffee cup in the air to show it needed filling.

"But there's another sound
inside
that sound,” Samantha said. She brought the coffee to the table, filled their cups, then went to the sink and turned on the water again. “Can you hear the other sounds sort of under it or inside it?"

Cy squinted at the faucet and listened intently for a moment, then shook his head no. “Maybe you're just hearing things,” he suggested.

Samantha turned off the water, sat at the table, and sipped her coffee a while. “It's
Italian
,” she declared, setting down her cup, smiling.

"You bought Italian coffee?"

"The sounds in the water. It sounds like somebody speaking Italian. What a relief!"

Cy put down his cup and looked across the table at her. “You speak Italian?"

"No. But my father always wanted me to learn. He spoke beautiful Italian."

"Then how do you know the faucet is speaking Italian?"

"Because it
sounds
like Italian. You don't have to speak Italian to know what it sounds like."

"And you think it's speaking Italian."

"Yes. Exactly. Isn't that
amazing
!” she said, clearly surprised and delighted.

Cy studied her a moment. Since moving in with Samantha he had grown acquainted with her odd disconnects—like, right now her hair clip had flipped open and was hanging in a tangle of hair, but she didn't even notice it —and her even odder connects, like her belief that the plants on the windowsill grew better because she talked to them. Now she was taking a jumble of liquid sounds to be the syllables of a language she didn't understand.

"We can get it fixed,” he told her. “Call a plumber.” He stood up, tossed his car keys deftly from one hand to the other. “But I've got to go. Call a plumber."

"No, no,” Samantha said hurriedly. “I don't mind it or anything."

"But if you keep hearing it,” he said, heading down the hall to get his coat.

"It doesn't bother me,” she said, trailing after him. “And you don't hear it. Why don't we just leave it alone?"

Cy had climbed into his goose-down parka and was already pulling on his gloves. “All right,” he said, brushing her cheek with a kiss as he went out the door.

2

Cy and Samantha first met at the reception party given by the Nature & Technology Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Samantha was standing by the coffee table in a white dress that she had made herself, which may explain why it looked somewhat crooked, and Cy was drawn to her as to a crookedly hung picture that needed to be straightened up. He introduced himself by saying, “I'm in nanotechnology.” Samantha waited for him to finish, but when he didn't add anything more, she began to say, “That must be very interest—"

Before she could finish, Cy smiled and told her, “Your earrings don't match."

Samantha lifted a hand, tentatively touched one earring, then the other. “Oh. You're right,” she said. “I'm sorry."

"Can I get you some wine?” Cy asked.

She smiled as if the offer surprised her. “Oh, that's so kind of you. But no."

Cy clapped his hand flat on his chest, saying, “Cyrus Kleiner. Cy, for short."

"And I'm Samantha Giardino.” She smiled.

"That's a pretty name, Sam."

Samantha got as far as, “Actually, I prefer to be called—” But by then Cy was saying, “What's your line?"

"My line?” she asked, puzzled.

"Like me, I'm in nanotech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And you? You are?"

"Oh!” She laughed. “I'm the pastry chef at the Café Mondello."

"Really?” He was surprised. “Oh. Well. That's perfectly
all
right
. That's
nothing
to be ashamed of. But how come you're at this conference? It's for scientists, not for sweet things.” He smiled, meaning that she herself was a sweet thing.

"We were hired. The Café Mondello caters parties like this.” Her bra strap slipped from her shoulder and she tucked it back into place. “That sometimes happens,” she said apologetically. “Sorry. Tell me about your no-no-technology."

"No-no technology?” He laughed and thought she was pretty. “A nanometer is a billionth of a meter and nanotech is all about controlling really small but important things, like molecules and atoms."

Cy told her a lot about nanotechnology, not everything and not right there at the conference, but later that evening over dinner at the Gandhi. While they were eating their vegetable curry he told her about his PhD dissertation on water and chlorophyll and the harvesting of light—"Harvesting light,” Samantha echoed. “That's so cool."—and about his post-doctoral success at the Molecular Foundry at Berkeley where he was on the team that worked on nanotech membranes for the desalinization of water, and just this week he had come from California to Massachusetts to join this MIT project on nanotech water purification, his area being hydro-turbulence and laminar flow. Over a dessert of kulfi he informed her that in a few years people were going to run out of fresh water, because there wasn't enough on the planet— “Oh, that's not so cool,” Samantha murmured—so it was essential to find ways to desalinate and purify water, which was why his project was so important.

Samantha hesitated to tell Cy about pastry, for fear it would bore him and, besides, making pastry wasn't very important. But while they were sipping the sweet milky Indian coffee she did talk a bit about her brother and his wife and their new baby, how they had moved to Connecticut where she visited them on weekends. And outside, before they parted, she told him about her best friend who had been her apartmentmate till she got married this past June and moved to Arizona. Samantha was afraid she sounded lonely—in fact, she was lonely—but she was relieved to see that Cy hadn't noticed at all.

3

Now, Cy liked Samantha, maybe not as intensely as he had a month ago, but he still liked her. His girlfriend back in California had been a forensic accountant, a woman who could pluck a thirty dollar fraud from a three million dollar budget, a woman most difficult to live with. As Cy would tell you himself, Samantha was easy to live with. And though he was discreet and would never tell you this, he had discovered she was very easy in bed—wonderfully, luxuriously easy. But, as he had also discovered, the same easygoing, laid-back acceptance of everything meant she forgot tidiness and kept a messy kitchen. He was trying to correct that, but it was hard. The battered old sink always held a few pots, pans, and bowls, or an assortment of choppers, beaters, strainers, and spoons, or maybe some dishes, spatulas, and bottles. These things would stay there even when sparkling clean until she got around to putting them away.

But she loved to cook and she was good at it. He had seen her roll out pastry dough, roll it out thin as a wafer, then paint it with butter, fold it, roll it out and paint it with butter again, fold it again, roll it out again—sweating over it for an hour at least. Then, having shut this buttery concoction in the oven, she'd not use the timer but, relying on instinct, she'd flip open the oven door, take the now translucent leafy golden shell and transmute it to a delicacy filled with creams or comfits and topped by powdered sugar, all of which she'd then eat, adding back to herself the few ounces she'd subtracted by rolling out the dough. Still, she had a splendid body. Or, to be precise, she would have if she shed a dozen pounds, or even just ten—yes, a mere ten.

The MIT motto is
Mens Sana In Corpore Sano
, a sound mind in a sound body, and Cy liked it. He figured that if Samantha could be led to discipline her body, she'd discipline her mind at the same time. Now this morning she had said she heard running water speaking Italian as it came out of the faucet, and if she wasn't crazy—his California girlfriend was crazy, but not Samantha—then she certainly needed to exercise her thinking and firm up her mind. So when he got to the lab that morning he opened a phone book, went searching for gyms, and found a place near the Café Mondello called Hard Buns Aerobics. Cy enrolled Samantha in an aerobics class that met five days a week.

4

Monday was the only day of the week that the Café Mondello was closed, so, after Cy sped off to MIT that morning, Samantha was able to leisurely wash the breakfast dishes, all the while listening to those new sounds the water made as it poured into the sink. She felt unreasonably happy. If you paid no attention you heard only the usual garbled burbling water, but if you focused and listened carefully you could hear an unhurried stream of words. She couldn't understand the words but, as she could have told Cy, you don't have to understand a language to know you're hearing words. She shut the faucet slowly and gently, feeling it would be rude to turn it off abruptly. In the bathroom she turned on the washbowl faucet—first the cold water tap, then the hot, then both at once. She listened attentively each time, but heard only the familiar sounds of rushing water, and when she flushed the toilet she heard nothing out of the ordinary there, either.

In the bedroom she pulled off her hairclip (she had worn it only because Cy liked it) and tossed it on the bureau. If anybody had ever asked, she would have said she definitely liked Cy, otherwise she wouldn't have had him move in. Cy was a wonderful surprise, the way he came on to her when they first met. And he always surprised her when they made love, too, the way he paused to close the curtains so neatly and arrange the candles and pillows just so. He loved to take her to bed and, frankly, it was flattering that something about her enthralled him, whatever it was. In fact, whenever she felt herself drifting from him she felt guilty, but she forgave herself because she knew that Cy had passion enough for both of them.

Now she tugged the bedclothes straight, or mostly straight—straight enough, anyway—then she stamped into her boots, zipped up her ski jacket, and stepped outside. The air was icy, the sky pure blue, and the sun dazzling. She walked down to the Avenue, singing to herself so softly you wouldn't have heard it unless you were really listening. She stopped at Prospero's Books to buy
Teach Yourself Italian
, then walked along to the Café Mondello, where she unlocked the back door, laid the book on the shelf over the coat hooks, then locked the door and went off to do her Monday errands, still singing.

5

So now Samantha had two things she looked forward to each day. One was her book, Teach Yourself Italian, which she studied whenever she had a break at the Café, and the other was Kate Swift, her instructor at Hard Buns Aerobics. Kate didn't actually have hard buns, but when she stripped down to her sports bra and shorts Samantha could see she did have nice snug buttocks and tight abdominal muscles. And she was totally likeable. After her first day in class Samantha had apologized to Kate, saying, “I'm sort of . . . I mean, my body is sort of . . . Well, you can see it."

"Your body looks fine to me,” Kate told her. “These exercises will firm it up a bit, but mostly they'll improve your cardiovascular system. Your heart will have to work less, and that's a good thing.” She smiled. “You probably work enough already.” A lot of the exercises were done to fast rhythmic music, and Samantha especially liked a piece that Kate herself had composed when she was in a rock band. Samantha brought her a pastry every day, saying something like, “This is our almost-no-fat cannoli,” or “Here's something I created, tell me if you like it.” After two weeks of classes they had a glass of wine at La Brasserie and Samantha invited Kate to dinner at the little apartment on Friday night.

Cy was surprised when Samantha told him that she had invited her aerobics instructor to dinner, and Samantha herself wondered if the get-together would go well. But it did go well, mostly. In fact, Cy chatted very attentively with Kate Swift and was charming in his own way, though at the beginning he did get stuck in an extra long description of how small a nanometer was, saying it was like a marble compared to the size of the earth, or like a penny to so many zillion dollars, or like something to something else and on and on. But he listened unusually well and was obviously happy that they had so much in common, like when it turned out they both liked rock climbing. They talked about ropes and gear and Cy roguishly offered to arm wrestle with her right there at the table, at which Kate laughed and said she was sure he'd win. By the end of dinner Cy's cheeks were pink from drinking so much wine and he looked quite contented. Then Samantha went to get the coffee, ran some water over the dishes, and when she brought the coffee to the table Cy had leaned over to Kate and was quietly saying, “Sam thinks the faucet speaks Italian."