Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 (17 page)

"Interesting," she said.

Then he said, "But there isn't any water in those clouds, just sulfuric acid, and the air is drenched with UV light...."

"And the Mongols are landing on Mars," she pointed out.

He didn't understand.

"This a wonderful time to find life somewhere else," she said.

The West was stealing the East's lightning.

Sandra put her plate aside and stood. Then with a practical tone, she said, "Let's share the bath."

"All right."

The bathroom was smaller than he remembered, and stale, and the running water made the air dense. They lit candles, one fat vanilla-scented candle on the tank beside the toilet. The water wasn't as warm as Sandra wanted, and shaking her wet hand, she choked the cold tap back and then began to undress.

Side by side and with barely a glance at the other, they pulled off clothes, forming a common pile. Then she climbed into the warmish water, looking at his face and penis and his face again. She smiled fondly, if not happily. He climbed in behind her. Inside the porcelain tub, she wasn't tiny, and Quentin became a long strapping man with too much leg and arm. She left the water running slowly, making noise. The soap was a hard small bar with the dark ripples that come when soap is old and well used. She handed him a washrag. He rolled the soap and rag between his hands until he had suds and washed her stomach and breasts and her back and the back of her neck, and then he washed his stomach and face and crotch and the calves of each leg. She worked on her own face and released the excess water, and he clumsily reached around his back, cleaning what he could, unable to reach where his rump pressed against the cool white porcelain.

"Do you mind?" she asked.

"Mind what?"

"If I go potty now. I really have to."

"Go on," he said, thinking that seemed polite.

She lifted the lid and sat and the bowl sang as the urine danced, and she watched him by candlelight, embarrassment emerging briefly and then vanishing. The sudden bright fart surprised both of them. She laughed and said, "Sorry," and Quentin laughed louder than she did, trying and trying to remember any moment in his life where he had been this happy.

Marcus Julius Constantius was the only child of a noblewoman named Sophia and a Roman general named Aurelius. A bright boy but physically weak and unimpressive, his lack of visible attributes helped him garner power. No one in the Emperor's court looked on him as a threat, and it wasn't until the civil war of 290 to 293 that his skills as a politician and tactician became known. In 295, the young general led his legions to put down the rebellion in Jerusalem, and that was the moment and the place when Constantine first came into intimate contact with the Christian church.

No conversion is simple. The man supposedly dreamt of a fiery cross descending from Heaven, but Romans were passionate believers in signs of every sort, and Constantine surely had other dreams that meant as much when he woke. But Christians weren't dreams, and they became helpful allies in his fight against Jewish rebels. Intellectual and philosophical reasons helped the transformation, and after more than two centuries of quiet growth, the Woman's Faith had spread throughout the Empire's educated women, growing familiar and relatively benign.

Sophia was as politically astute as her son, believing in power and poise, and in opportunities taken when the moment was ripe. Officially, she didn't convert until 299. By then her son had crushed Maximus and his band of thugs, gaining a stranglehold on the emperor's seat. That mother and son union lasted another twenty years, and after her death Constantine reigned alone for another two decades.

The dutiful son had promised to found a new capital in his mother's name. But every man is more than any woman's dutiful son. Sophia died, and that pledge was broken, replaced by a great cathedral erected in the center of Constantine's city.

One evening, the middle-aged emperor climbed to the highest portion of the church, accompanied by members of his court. Gazing across the metropolis, Constantine mentioned that he envied nothing but eagles, but against expectations, he didn't want their strong wings or their magnificent, soul-stirring beauty. What he wished for was their perfect vision, and turning to the Theotokos, he wondered aloud if some magic or perhaps a Christian prayer would bestow such eyes on a human skull.

Endless moments mark the change of the world, and this was one of the most important of all.

Rachel I was the Theotokos. A stubborn woman long before winning her office, she shook her head at the emperor's selfish request, and with a dismissive voice said, "But you would not want such a gift, sire."

"And why not?" Constantine demanded.

"Because perfect eyes would flood your soul with too much." The most powerful woman in the world was laughing at the most powerful man, warning him, "You would be bewildered by all that you saw. The vision of God would bring the worst kind of blindness."

Quentin wasn't sleeping.

Location and circumstances didn't exist. He was sitting up in bed, and it seemed to be his bed inside his own unlit apartment, but numb from sleep, he possessed no history that would explain any of this.

The smallest unit of existence, devoid of time.

Freedom.

And then the telephone screamed its melody for a second time, or a third or thirteenth time. This was his apartment, and he had been sleeping. And then he wasn't. Bare feet put themselves on the carpeted floor, and standing was reflexive, graceful and sudden just like the three steps that took him to the box singing on the wall.

"Hello."

He said the word, and before anyone could answer, he said it again.

"Hello?"

By then his heart rate had soared and the next breath made him ready to dive deep underwater. Scratching for explanations, he decided that his grandmother had died. This was an emergency call in the middle of the night, and so certain was he that he heard his mother's voice in the background, not quiet but softened by distance.

The woman screamed, "No. No."

Then there was a click, and silence.

Quentin's legs sagged and recovered, and he stood in the dark air of that silent house, listening to the air rushing from his suddenly aching chest.

The watery sounds of the dial tone returned.

He hung the receiver back on its plastic box.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he tried to place the voice and couldn't. But he was certain that it wasn't his mother's voice, or his grandmother's, and he was nearly as sure that he didn't know the woman at all.

A drunken wrong number; that was the best story.

Quentin looked at the hands of his clock. Monday had arrived, and he needed to sleep. Head on his pillow, his eyes closed and his body quit moving, but nothing else about him was sleepy.

Quentin held that pose for an immeasurably long while, eyes sealed while he watched his thoughts flow.

The family looked splendid in their own home. Mother was some kind of beauty with milk-heavy breasts and the baby boy on her hip, while Father was a portrait of dignity, confident and steady with more than a touch of nobility. Of course he wore nothing but a penis. What else did any good man need to wear? He was photographed strolling along a jungle trail on The Island of Flowers, and turning the page, Quentin found the photographer's hand laid against the same trail, her fingers and thumb giving proportions to those tiny footprints.

Monday night.

Girls at the next table were pretending to study. One girl said that her government class was canceled. What luck.

Quentin heard the words but didn't notice them. Glancing at his watch, he closed the magazine and put it under his shirt. He was never this impulsive. But borrowing wasn't stealing, he thought, walking slowly out of the library and then picking up the pace as he crossed campus. Leaving his apartment door unlocked, he undressed and sat on his bed, legs crossed and the borrowed magazine opened in his naked lap. He intended to finish the article about the Ebu gogo before Sandra arrived. The wildest islands in the Spice Archipelago were inhabited by this little species of humanity.

The Ebu gogo had a simple language and perfect little stone tools as well as a lean culture that could be carried everywhere. Quentin went as far as trying a few of those sharp words in his own mouth. And then he realized that Sandra was late.

She was never late.

He counted each of the next twenty minutes before calling her at home. When the phone was in his hand, he expected her to answer. Once he hung up, he assured himself that he never expected to hear her voice, because she was on her way.

He dressed again, sitting close to the window.

Night came from its hiding places.

No Trailbreaker appeared.

Twice more, he called her home. Then he drove past her house, parking on the street and walking back. The neighborhood was calm. Her car was hiding inside the garage, or it was gone. But the living room lamp was burning. Some little moth, dense and busy, was trying to fly out of Quentin's mouth. He felt uneasy, except he also felt happy and hopeful too, giving the doorbell a long push, convinced that someone was coming.

Hope rose higher, and he rang the bell again, a gambler's confidence taking hold. But the knob didn't move. Nobody was home. And that's when he thought to look inside the mailbox, discovering bills and the same colorful ads that he'd received today.

Every parked car needed to be studied, shadows and street lights filling them with lurking figures.

The urge to run was defeated by the fear of being noticed. Quentin walked back to his car, starting it and breathing, then driving past the empty teacher's lot, and past the grocery and the laundry, never finding the Trailbreaker. Then he pulled up in front of his house, parked and sat with the other shadows, the steering wheel in both hands as he watched his empty bedroom window, trying to piece together any comforting story.

By Thursday, the laundry had to be done. Inside the shoes, bare feet. Under the trousers, an old swimsuit meant for a smaller waist. Four washers were churning, which was a personal record, and Quentin sat on one plastic chair until he remembered its significance, moving to a chair that he had never used, pretending to read a Johnsgal novel when he wasn't looking at every new customer who came through the door.

A soldier entered, a Marine gunner with a small white duffel on his shoulder. The uniform was crisp, the beard trimmed military close, and when the man looked his way, Quentin dropped his eyes.

Even when he stared at the floor, Quentin saw the soldier. Somehow he knew that face. Age and whiskers had resculpted the features, and chemicals had lightened and reddened his formerly black hair. But the eyes were his mother's eyes, and he rocked like Sandra rocked side to side, pushing civilian clothes into an unclaimed washer.

Quentin stood, lifting one of his washing-machine lids.

Quietly, in a near-whisper, Theo asked, "Where is she?"

"I don't know." The lid fell from his hands with a crash.

The two young men sat together. The one who wasn't being chased was nervous, every new noise making him jump. The other man, the fugitive, seemed focused but comfortable. Maybe the uniform gave him courage.

Theo studied Quentin before asking, "When did you see her last?"

"Saturday night."

Theo nodded.

"Sunday morning," Quentin added.

"And since?"

He described Monday, minus the nudity. And he admitted to visiting his mother's house every night but tonight, although last night he didn't park and step up on the porch. His account had more details than necessary, but after a childhood spent listening to a natural lecturer, Theodore let his companion chatter.

Suspicion crept into his mother's eyes.

"You think I had something to do with this," Quentin guessed.

"Did you?"

"No."

Theo waited a moment. "Well, good," he said.

But the verdict had its effect. Quentin felt like a liar, an undiluted idiot. Something that he had said or done led to this mess. Unless it was some matter that he neglected. Heart thudding, hands shoved into his armpits, he wanted to say, "No," again, just to test this self-accusing intuition. He wanted to hear if his liar's voice would break. But his companion had made his own decision about guilt, and with a shy little smile, Theo said, "I know you didn't. How could you?"

Quentin dropped his hands, flexing them. Almost too softly to be heard, he said, "They took her."

Theo nodded. "Federals, probably."

"Because they want you," Quentin assumed.

Theo glanced at the rest of the room. Then with a stern voice—and not a quiet voice—he said, "Federals don't fuck with little runaways."

Quentin stared at places that were simple, the faceless washers and the grimy floor, fighting to clear his thoughts.

"She trusts you," Theo said.

"What?"

Theo showed him a half-sheet of paper covered with nonsense. "The code's based on Byzantine Greek," said Theo. "This is your address, your phone number. And the other places you might be found. It's not much of a code, I know. But it's enough to baffle most of the government idiots."

"She gave you my whereabouts."

"For emergencies."

All the ways in the world to feel loved, and this one left Quentin weepy. He sobbed and didn't care that he was sobbing, and Theo watched the show, feeling sorry for both of them. Then looking away, he admitted, "I don't know what to do."

Quentin handed back the paper. "Why did they take your mother?"

"They suspect," said her son.

"Suspect what?"

"She's an important dissident."

"Dissident," Quentin repeated.

"There's a group of anti-war, open-border idiots who want a permanent peace with the East. She belongs to them."

This wasn't about her son; it was Sandra. That's why her house and her car were bugged. How many more revelations did this woman have for him?

"Is she important?" Quentin asked.

Theo squinted. "Why the fuck would anyone tell me? If I got picked up, everything would be compromised."