Stories: All-New Tales ngss-1 Read online

  In March the ground thawed and she tacked up the map. She’d turned her older boy’s room into a command center, emptying his desk and filling the drawers with her notebooks. On a brand-new corkboard she posted her schedule. Four days a week she’d search, weather permitting. She’d been too impatient in the fall, letting her emotions get the best of her. She’d actually expected to find the girl her first time out, as if she were psychic. She needed to be calm and methodical. If she was going to succeed, it would be because she knew how to work.

  Ollie just liked riding in the car and going for walks. He had his certificate, but the death scent made him sneeze. The smells that interested him came from other dogs, and he immediately covered them with his own, lifting his leg and making her wait. As spring turned to summer the only thing he’d discovered was a bee’s nest, provoking a swarm and earning him a bump on the nose. He would have stayed and tried to fight them if she hadn’t dragged him away.

  She made the mistake of telling her younger son, who told her older son, who called and said he thought they agreed she was going to stop.

  “I don’t see why you’re so upset,” she said.

  “I’m worried about you. Do you understand why?”

  “No.”

  “That’s why,” he said.

  After that, every time he called, he made a point of asking how the search was going.

  She refused to lie.

  “The same,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  It meant she was ranging farther and farther west, devoting whole weeks to a single exit off the interstate, tromping the buggy jungles behind truck stops and fireworks outlets, breaking ground by every stockade fence she came across, graffitied or not. Her knees creaked, her arms ached, and then at work she had to lean over the conveyor and lift a gallon of milk into someone’s cart, and she thought maybe he was right. She was too old to be doing this.

  There was always the possibility James Wade had been lying. As her map filled with pins, she tried not to let it bother her.

  In August, jumping a drainage ditch, she twisted her ankle and missed three weeks, ruining her schedule and giving her son a new excuse to badger her. To catch up she went out five days a week, but felt like she was rushing, cutting corners. The weather was mild, Indian summer lingering deep into October. If it held up (and the Weather Channel said there was a chance), she’d have a shot at finishing.

  One bright afternoon she was outside Fairport Harbor, behind a Ryder truck center, when Ollie stopped and lay down in a shallow trough filled with pine duff. He rested his head on his paws and flattened his ears back as if he were being punished. It wasn’t anything she’d taught him.

  “Come on, get up.” She whistled and clapped, and still he didn’t budge. She had to coax him away with a treat and tie him to a tree, and even then he hunkered down, cowering.

  The Ryder place wasn’t a self-storage, and the fence, though heavily tagged, was chain link with green plastic slats, but she went to get the video camera anyway.

  The trough was tub shaped, around five feet long, and sunk a few inches below the ground around it. She brushed away the leaves and pine needles and laid the pitchfork beside it for scale, narrating as she panned along the fence. “November third, 2008, 1:27 P.M.”

  When she’d gotten enough coverage, she set down the camera and took up the pitchfork. She dug into the very center of the trough, jabbing the prongs through the crust, pushing it deeper with her foot, pulling back on the handle so the ground cracked and broke around the tines. She stuck it in again, levering open a hole.

  Behind her Ollie whined.

  “Shush,” she said.

  The third time she dug down and yanked back, the pitchfork snagged on a swath of fabric.

  It was discolored with mud and stank of mildew, but was unmistakably a piece of green nylon, a wisp of white batting poking from a hole.

  She set aside the pitchfork, tossed away her gloves and tugged at the piece, pulling another couple inches through the dirt. It was the shell of a sleeping bag, she could see the thick seam of the zipper. With a finger she wiped at the crumbling mud, revealing rusty teeth.

  Thank God, she thought. What would Brian say now?

  As long as she’d waited for this moment, she didn’t want to see what was inside. The thing to do was stop and call someone, but after last year, she couldn’t. She knelt beside the hole, digging it free with her bare hands. This time she would make sure. Then everyone would know she wasn’t crazy.

  Gene Wolfe. LEIF IN THE WIND

  “HE’S BEEN OUT THERE,” ENA SAID, “for an hour and fifty-two minutes. It took him twenty-eight to nail that plate back down. I’ve been trying to get him to come back in ever since.”

  Brennan rubbed his chin. It was a big one, and required quite a bit of rubbing. “He answers you? He replies?”

  “Sometimes. Not always.”

  “But he’s conscious?”

  “I think so.”

  “Fugue state?”

  Ena shrugged.

  “Talk to him.”

  “I’ll try.” Ena’s gesture switched on the mike. “This is Ena again, Leif. Brennan is here with me now. What are you doing?”

  “Watching the sunrise, Ena. The planetary shadow is fading. Fading…This sun appears behind the horizon curve, just peeping out past it now. I can feel the first breezes of its solar wind.”

  Brennan tried to make his voice soft. “You can’t possibly feel a solar wind, Leif. You’re suited up.”

  “I feel it.”

  Ena said, “Please come back, Leif. We’ve completed the survey, done everything we were supposed to do, and-”

  Brennan interrupted her. “The job’s finished, Leif. There’s no life down there. We have rock samples, cores, the works. Habitable planet, no life. Seed it and there could be colonies here in two hundred years. Maybe less.”

  Leif said nothing.

  Ena said, “I’ve never begged a man for anything-”

  “Birds. I see birds.”

  Brennan snorted. “You don’t see birds, damnit! There aren’t any, and if there were, you couldn’t see them from up here.”

  Ena said, “Think of me, Leif-if you won’t think of yourself, at least think of me. The trip home will take fifteen more years. What if Brennan dies?”

  Silence.

  “Walt died. So did Barbara and Alaia. Brennan could die, too. I’d try to take the ship home all by myself, and I’d go insane. I couldn’t bear it. You know what the tests showed-nobody could.” She paused, waiting. “Think of me if you won’t think of yourself.”

  Leif exclaimed, “You should see these birds! The detail! The colors! The combs and crests and wattles!”

  Brennan said, “You’re dreaming them, Leif.”

  “I couldn’t dream anything like this. It isn’t in me. It isn’t in anybody. They’re so big, and they get smaller as they come closer. Smaller and smaller, like jewels.”

  Ena looked at Brennan, expecting him to reply, and saw that he was suiting up. She switched off her mike. “Are you going out there after him?”

  “If I have to, yes.”

  “I know you could outwrestle him, but can you catch him?”

  “I’ll have to.”

  She switched her mike back on. “Leif, I’m offering everything I’ve got. I’ll be your slave if you’ll just come back.” She gulped, and wondered whether her mike had picked it up. “I’ll do your details, all of them, and mine, too. We’ll be heroes when we get home, and I’ll give you a bath first, and clean and press your uniform. I’ll shine your boots and polish your brass. You said I was beautiful once, remember? Wouldn’t you like a beautiful slave?”

  Brennan muttered, “Did he really?”

  “I’ll-sleep with you like you wanted, Leif. You can do whatever you like with me, and I’ll do whatever you tell me to. Please?”

  Leif said, “They’re nesting in me, all the beautiful birds. Perching on nerve fibers, sipping from
tiny veins, Ena. Fluttering and singing. This is how a tree feels in summer.”

  Wearily, Ena switched off her mike. “He doesn’t care about me.”

  “He doesn’t care about us,” Brennan told her. “Not now he doesn’t.”

  Leif said, “The wind murmurs in my branches, and the birds nest there.” He sounded rapturous. Ena’s screen showed a silver starfish, arms wide, legs spread, face invisible behind the glare of sunlight on his visor. Slowly, the starfish revolved, rolling like a wheel.

  She heard the airlock open. “You’re going after him?”

  Brennen stepped into the airlock. “Wish me luck.”

  “I do,” she said. The airlock closed, and she added, “I wish you both luck. I hope you don’t kill each other.”

  Still later: “Most of all I wish me luck.”

  Was there nothing she could do but sit and watch? She unsnapped her belt, floated up, and pushed off.

  Walt should have looked just as she remembered him from last time-so quickly frozen that no big crystals had formed, eyes shut, and very, very dead.

  He did not. Dead, yes, but still there. So quickly frozen, she thought, that his soul had not had time to leave his body. Brennan thought it might be possible to reanimate him back on earth, and Brennan might be right.

  Walt’s eyes were not completely shut. Surely they had been before?

  Surely. But Walt was peeking out like one who feigns sleep.

  “I may sleep with Leif if Brennan brings him back. I’ll have to sleep with Brennan. You’re dead, Walt.” Ena paused. “You’re dead for now, anyway. I won’t be cheating on you.”

  From behind a plastic shield as clear as air, Walt watched her in silence.

  “You understand, don’t you?” She began to close the lid. “Besides, I-we’re not all that different from you, we women.”

  She returned to the bridge, floating along ovoid black corridors that should have echoed but did not. It had been wrong to silence them, she thought. The sound absorption was too good, it worked too well. Ghosts whispered in the black corridors now, Alaia’s ghost and Barbara’s.

  Walt’s ghost.

  On her screen, Brennan had a line around Leif’s waist and was playing it out behind him as he returned to the ship. Brightly lit by rising Beta Andromedae, the slack orange line traced fantastic loops and whorls against the still-dark planet they orbited. Ena switched on her mike. “Did he give you any trouble, Brennan?”

  “Not a bit.”

  Changing viewpoints, she watched Brennan enter the airlock, turn, and begin hauling Leif in. No resistance, but…She inserted a sedative cap in the injector. Leif, she told herself, was not particularly strong. And pushed aside the knowledge that all psychotics were.

  Inside, he removed his helmet without assistance. His expression was rapt, his eyes elsewhere. The neck was one of the best places.

  Leif relaxed, swaying, and Brennan said, “That was probably a good idea.”

  “It can’t hurt.” Ena was opening Leif’s suit.

  “I’m full of birds,” Leif told her.

  “I see.”

  “They’re nesting in me. Have I mentioned that?”

  Absently, she nodded.

  “We are their trees. That’s why there are no trees down there. We trees have just arrived.” Leif paused. “I would like to sit down.”

  “No reason not to,” Brennan told him. “Step out of the boots and I’ll put you in a chair.”

  When Leif did not move, Brennan lifted him out, the magnetic boot soles holding them to the deck. When Brennan had Leif in his console seat, Ena belted him in.

  The first jump covered four thousandths of one light-year; recharging for the next would take thirty-six hours.

  “Are we going home?” Leif asked. He sounded sleepy, and had not touched the buckle that held him in his seat.

  Brennan said, “Right.” He was refolding Leif’s suit.

  “You’ll have to walk in the spinner,” Ena told Leif, “just like Brennan and me. Just like you did on the trip out. Can you do it?”

  Leif seemed not to have heard her.

  “Two hours a day,” Brennan said. “If you don’t, your legs will break when we get home.”

  Ena was inspired. “Your limbs, Leif. That’s your arms and your legs. You know what happens when limbs break.”

  Leif stared at her. “The nests fall down.”

  “Exactly!”

  “I’m going into the spinner now.” Leif released his buckle. “Three hours. Three hours every day for me. I won’t forget.”

  When Leif had gone, Brennan chuckled, wrapped Ena in his arms, and kissed her. When they parted, he whispered, “You were always the smartest woman on board.”

  They were recharging for the fourth jump when Ena heard the first bird, its clear trills carried through the ventilation system. A twenty-minute search found it in Specimen Storage number 3, where it had nested among her neatly labeled sacks of rocks.

  It was somewhat larger than a crow, and was not (she decided) exactly as a bird should be. That sinuous neck, armored in diamond scales, might have belonged to a snake; the sides of its long, curved beak were toothed like the blades of saws. It spread its wings when she approached, threatening her with retractile claws that sprouted from their forward edges.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Ena said softly. “Really, I don’t. You’re very, very valuable to all three of us. You’re an alien life-form, you see.” It was difficult to remain calm.

  The bird rattled its feathers-a warning buzz, loud and abrupt.

  She kicked off from a specimen bag, backing away. “I’m going to bring you something to eat. I don’t know what you’ll like, so I’ll try several things.” Could it eat their food?

  Brennan was checking the recharge readings. “Pile’s running good,” he told her. “Next jump should be right on schedule.”

  “Leif’s birds are real.” She had drifted over to her console.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Seeing his skepticism, she nodded. “Sure. But don’t you hear that noise? Listen. I think it’s coming through the vents.”

  After a moment he left his seat and kicked off, stopping aft vent. Ena smiled to herself.

  “That’s a bearing getting ready to fail. Probably one of the fans. I’ll see to it.”

  As he shot out into the corridor, she called, “Good luck!”

  She was checking the pile herself when Leif wandered in. “Do you need me?”

  “Not really.” She smiled. “The best thing you could do right now is to shower and put on a clean uniform. Will you do that? For me?”

  Leif nodded.

  “Thank you! I really appreciate it. Put the one you’re wearing in the laundry, and I’ll see to it. Don’t forget to empty the pockets.”

  “There’s nothing in there.” Leif seemed to wait for her to speak. “All right, I’ll empty them anyway.”

  It was almost time for the jump when Brennan returned. “There’s a bird on the ship!”

  “No shit?” Ena feigned surprise.

  He grabbed at a handy conduit and swung to a stop, panting. “Sweetheart, you ought to see it! It’s taller than I am.”

  “If you’re going to sniff solvents,” Ena said icily, “I don’t want you to call me sweetheart. Cut it out. Cut it out right now. This is the only warning you’ll get.”

  “It’s down on H Deck. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  “One of us has to stay on the bridge, and since you’ve been sniffing, it had better be me.”

  “Leif can do it.”

  “Leif isn’t around, and God only knows what he’d do if he were alone here.”

  “It’s real. Do I have to take a picture?”

  Feeling almost sorry for him, she shook her head. “No. No, you don’t, Brennan. Catch it and throw it off the ship. It’ll be out in space somewhere, and I can pick it up in my viewer.”

  “Don’t you understand what this means?”

  “Yes. It mea
ns that Leif can infect others with his hallucinations. Or else you’ve been sniffing. I like the second one better.”

  “I’m going to catch it,” Brennan told her. “Catch it and confine it. Then I’m going to show it to you. Don’t jump without me. You’re not qualified.”

  “You mean I don’t have the paper. By this time I know how to do it as well as you do.”

  “Don’t jump!”

  Then he was gone. Ena smiled to herself as she tried to track him through the surveillance cameras. When FULL CHARGE appeared on her upper-left screen, she jumped.

  A DAY AND MORE passed before Brennan returned. Ena slept on the bridge, tethered to a hatch handle and hanging weightless among 552 instruments. Leif wandered in and volunteered to bring her food and water. She was using the surveillance cameras to search for Brennan when Brennan touched her shoulder.

  “You jumped-I felt it.” He was trying hard to look severe, but could only look haggard and triumphant.

  “Sure,” Ena said. “I knew you would. I jumped, and that’s why the pile’s burning and power’s flickering. I don’t know what that vibration is, but it darned near-”

  “Very funny.” Brennan belted himself into his console seat. He studied the screen, clicked twice, and studied it again.

  “Did you catch the bird?”

  “I did.” Brennan nodded. “I got a number three cargo net and rigged it up to close when the bird tried to get through. When it was ready, I drove the bird in front of me with a welding torch.”

  “Where is it now?”

  He sighed. “Empty ration locker, or I hope it is. It may still be tangled in the net. I don’t know.”

  “We can’t keep it there for fifteen years.”

  “Right. We’ll let it out, v-tape it, kill it, v-tape it some more, strip the bones and save them.” Under his breath he added, “If it has bones.”

  Ena said, “Tissue specimens, too. Maybe we should freeze the head.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “It tried…Tricks. You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “You didn’t believe me when I told you Leif’s birds were real.”

  Brennan straightened up. “I’m still not sure you were right. Maybe I caught a delusion. You want to fetch the ’corder?”