Bastion Science Fiction Magazine - Issue 7, October 2014 (2 page)

The zero meets the tired man's red-squiggly eyes. "I want a hat."

"What?"

"I want a hat. Like you've got."

Emil Mekelburg is surprised, not for the first time tonight. This time, though, it is like something is wrong, or at least a little off. He starts to say something, shakes his head, chuckles, and opens up the storage compartment between the vehicle's front seats. The hinge makes a tiny metallic whine.

He holds out the blue logoed cap, but doesn't let go as the zero reaches for it. In a solemn tone of voice, something new from him, Emil says, "My grandmother on my mom's side was the first woman player ever on the Cubs. She was a reliever. Anna Barth. Buzzkill Barth.” He almost says more, but stops himself, shaking his head in a self-deprecating way and letting the zero take the baseball cap, which he covers his head with. The digits on his wrist are now counting down from thirty-two. He steps out with Emil into the wintry night.

#

The rubbery suit is repulsive, but he doesn't feel the cold anywhere but on his face. His movements seem a little less frail to him. He feels a loosening inside himself, or a quickening.

They cross the plaza. No one else is on the scene. The overlooking buildings are anonymous slabs. He is careful with his footing.

"You want the tape off?" Emil asks.

"Yes."

Ahead, the waist-high triangle of red blinks into darkness. It has cordoned off an area of shadow, plenty of room for a body.

"Do you know how you were killed?"

The zero knows the method isn't being investigated. "A knife..."

"Are you asking or telling?” Emil is grunting again, but it is from exertion. His squelching footfalls sound more labored than the zero's.

"Stabbing is the number one way people get murdered," the zero says, "now that they don't have guns anymore."

Emil slips, catches himself, and they continue on. "Yeah. And how did you get killed?"

"I was stabbed.” The zero halts at the edge of where the red holo was a moment ago. His nose is getting numb, but the cap keeps the snow out of his hair.

Emil, breathing out long plumes, stops alongside him. The zero feels the intensity of his gaze as he steps forward, by himself now, solemnly, like when Emil talked about his grandmother. The energetic feeling is still growing in him.

He walks back and forth over the area. He doesn't, after a moment, need to remember how the red triangle marked it off. He knows this plaza, though he doesn't always use it. It depends which rail transit station he is coming from or going to. Harriet means one, Morgan the other. Then, of course, there's work. Shoes. He designs shoes, and a whole host of memories emerge with that revelation. He is not wearing shoes now. His feet are encased in the same suit that envelops the rest of him.

His apartment is near here.

"Coming home," he says. His breath steams, just like Emil's.

"Yeah?” The tired voice is gone. This is what the man has been saving up his energy for.

"Coming from—there.” The zero points to one of the pedestrian accesses to the common. Probably Emil knows which station that suggests he got off at, and the significance of that. "Crossing—here.” He stands over a dark patch of ground. Maybe the daylight would show a stain; maybe not.

He turns, turns again. He takes three lurching steps. He lets the memory emerge. It is difficult to get to, dulled by trauma. The blade opened him up. He was by now already sinking into shock. The light, of course, was bad.

But it comes.

He straightens. Emil Mekelburg's hands open and close at his sides. The zero gives his description of the assailant, everything there is. It doesn't sound like much to him, but Emil's eyes twinkle. Maybe it is enough. A yellow light shows on Emil's collar. This information is being relayed. It will be acted on.

The zero lets out a pluming breath. He stands again over the place where Alfeo Jurado's life ended earlier tonight. The zero knows the final thoughts that were in the man's head, which of his two lovers he thought of last.

Emil talks into his collar pickup, terse sentences, pauses, then more staccato words.

The zero blinks. His eyes feel wet again. His earlobes are so cold they burn. When Emil's final pause becomes a silence, the zero asks, "Was it a robbery?"

Emil has his playback in hand again. The holo tape springs back to life. "He was robbed, yeah. If that's all there was about it—" shoulders heave, like he is fighting his low center of gravity, "—we don't know. Yet. But I think we'll find out.” He smiles. "Okay? That's a good thing."

The zero knows it is. But it is not, he discovers, the most important thing. The anxious vitality he feels is suddenly overflowing, overwhelming him. He smiles back at Emil, and it becomes a grin, big and ferocious.

An uncertain look comes to Emil's face. He starts to take a step forward. "Hey, kiddo..."

He likes that this man has called him that from the start. He likes that he hasn't said the word zero. A term, for some reason, he imagines the man's colleagues wouldn't hesitate to use. On his wrist eleven minutes are dwindling. He turns away and runs off into the snowy dark.

#

The lime suit's dimensions were embarrassing before. Now, he knows, he must look downright comical, a wobbly, ungraceful, green mass blobbing across the ground. Ice crunches underfoot. His eyes stream. But that vigor he feels lends him strength. He is moving fast. He has left the plaza behind.

He doesn't make for his apartment, though he knows how to get there from here. He could complete the journey Alfeo Jurado set out on earlier this evening.

The big slabby buildings surrounding the oddly shaped common give way to residential structures, some of them old and cheaply retrofitted. There are still no other pedestrians out, but up ahead he sees vehicular traffic, all of it on-GRID and neatly spaced, throwing light along the street. The zero runs toward this. He needs to get across that street.

Emil Mekelburg must be pursuing him. All of this is quite out of order. Zeroes, the zero knows, are not supposed to behave like this.

He runs toward the lights. He moves fast enough that the generated wind takes the cap's bill and lifts it off his head. Cold rushes over his scalp. He is sorry to have lost the hat, though he isn't sure if it actually belonged to Emil's grandmother or not. Still, he can't pause to pick it up. He races into the street. Flakes twirl in the dazzling spears of light. Big metaplastic shapes move at speeds that could seriously damage him if he stumbled. He wonders what the vehicles' occupants think, seeing him go bouncing across. He realizes he is still grinning, which must make the sight all the more bizarre.

There is only one more block to go. Fatigue suddenly grabs him, and his steps get heavy, then heavier. Despite the cold, he feels clammy. His body continues to throb. The vitality is still coursing through him, but it is as though it is extending beyond himself, spilling off the edges of his being, dissipating into a void.

He pants huge foggy plumes. His damp eyes slide out of focus, and he must strain to bring them back, to see his way to the end of the silent, dead-end street. There is a fence across the end, but it is old and there are gaps, and even with the bulgy suit he squeezes through one.

The scrubby greenery on the other side is weighted with snow. Branches, as he disturbs them, drop slush on his shoulders. The trail is short. It opens onto the concrete embankment. He walks up it a little ways, where there are worn, smoothed steps leading down to the canal's water.

That water isn't flowing now. Most months it does, a big pulsing artery of water, sometimes black, sometimes blue, but always vital and strong. Right now it is frozen over, of course. But he sees the shine of the surface, the ambient city glow revealing the long, iced over canal.

His exhaustion is serious. It is something more profound than fatigue. But he steps carefully down the stairs. There are just a few. He stops and sits down. Again the suit balloons around him, like a beach ball, but for the first time he appreciates its simple design, its utility. When he created shoes, he made them to be functional above all other considerations. This lime monstrosity isn't a garment; it is a body bag. It has a sure and real purpose.

As he lifts his arm, he turns and sees over the lip of the small stairwell. Back down the embankment, Emil stands at the foot of the little trail. He is breathing hard and his clothing looks wet, which means he didn't go back and retrieve his vehicle for the pursuit. Though he doesn't know why, the zero is deeply moved by this fact.

Emil Mekelburg doesn't come any closer. At his side he holds his Cubs cap, and the zero is very glad he got it back.

Struggling against his disappearing strength, he removes the cheap countdown display from his wrist. It shows under two minutes now. He sets it on a step behind him, out of his sight. He looks down on the dark unmoving water. It is still water, just in another form. He knows this. Like how he knows about the harsh winters, but also in the way that he knew the plaza, and the color of Harriet's hair, and Morgan's. And like how he knows the way he makes shoes.

He knows the frozen over canal is just beyond the gated bottom of these steps, but he can't see it anymore. His eyes have unfocused, in an absolute kind of way this time. His body feels like it is quivering, but he isn't sure he is moving at all. Some vestige of the smile, however, still tugs at his face. He is sure it does.

This city is landlocked. The nearest decently sized lake is ninety miles away, the ocean several hundred. Alfeo Jurado grew up by a seashore. He came to this spot to remember what a mighty moving body of water looks like, how beautiful it is, how humbling it can be.

Now he pays it his final visit. The ocean breathes hugely upon him, as the tide comes in.

###

Eric Del Carlo's fiction has appeared in
Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Shimmer
and many other publications. Look for his latest novel, an urban fantasy tale written with his father Vic Del Carlo entitled
The Golden Gate Is Empty
, coming soon from White Cat Publications.

When the Wind Blows on Tristan da Cunha

Meryl Stenhouse

I am Gemma Glass. These are my feet, running down the path beside the Hagan's barn where the sheep bawl and the clippers clack and rattle in the fleece. These are my arms outstretched, hands cupping the warm wet air, silky between my fingers. This is my mouth, open, savouring the taste of freedom and the smell of warm summer grass. On the ridge behind me St. Mary's bell rings to tell the island that school is over, done, beaten to death for another year. But I am already flying, already gone.

Black spots dance before my eyes and then the starbursts come, a private light show that only I can see, blooming across the sea and the land and the sky. The starbursts have no colour, just light and shape. They have always spoken to me. I just wish I could understand what they are saying. Today they are everywhere, tumbling over one another, touching everything. Every step brings one into bloom and I can hardly see the world behind them.

I want to tear off my uniform, fly the ugly blue dress behind me like a kite, let the wind and the water kiss my skin. But then Ivy Swain will say
there goes that crazy girl again
and Roger Rogers will laugh his awful laugh and point at me and say lewd things until the colour rises on my skin and the joy and beauty is gone. So I do not.

Who names their child Roger Rogers, anyway? Celia Lavarello, that's who, whose grandfather's name was Roger so let the boy's name be Roger, nevermind his father's name. They're just as inbred as each other, as everyone else here. Hagen and Lavarello and Rogers and Patterson and Repetto and Green and Swain. All marrying each other for years and years and years.

But not me. Not Gemma Glass. My mother came in with the tide one day, and one day went away again, before I even learned to say her name. I'm only partly one of them.

Dad is in the fields when I reach the house, but I can sneak low along the wall with the cattle on the other side and get to the shed. His bicycle is squeaky and rusted and old, like everything here, but quicker than walking. And I have a long way to go. Out along the road to The Settlement, as we call it, but really it's called Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, after the place in the United Kingdom. I can go there now. They said we could, when they changed the rules in 2009. I can go, anytime I want to.

But today I am riding through The Settlement, waving to some people, not waving to others. Everyone knows me, and I know everyone. Past the Post Office, where the mail comes once every couple of months, past the store where we buy things we can't make or grow, things from far away.

From here you can see down to Calshot Harbour, the new harbour they built after the old one was destroyed in the eruption in 1961. The
RMS Saint Helena
comes here from South Africa once a year, but mostly we just get little fishing boats coming across with mail and supplies. The
Saint Helena
will be here again in January, which means I have a month to make this work. I'm going to be on that boat. I'm going to go to England.

The road roars beneath my tires, gravel scattering, and I have to be careful on the corners because I have been over so many times, and I don't want to bleed today. Past another farm, there's so much space between them, so few people and yet it feels so crowded here. The volcano is a spike to my right, looming and bare, with the shearwaters wheeling and screaming overhead.

A little further and I see where I'm going, a white house that used to belong to the university when they were playing with the environment, trying to make it better. But they're long gone, like everyone else not born here, leaving us to our sheep and our cattle and each other.

Now there's just one man there. He has a telescope thicker than my leg. We compared one day, laughing, and he brushed my thigh, just there, with the back of his hand. When I cycled back, the sun high in the sky, the starbursts were so thick I had to stop and lie on the grass until they faded. I never knew what they were until he came, but now I know.