Asimov's Science Fiction 02/01/11 Read online

  I couldn’t do that. My family had taken that option from me, and I’d been so happy that they had. But I had to live nearly every minute of my life, and every minute all that was in my head was Sky, laughing and throwing her head back and sitting on that guy’s lap. There was no place I could run away to. I suddenly wanted to hit Increase.

  I moved away from the cot, restless, and went out again, this time to the 7-Eleven at the edge of the campus, and bought two bottles of Mekhong. I’d never been much for whiskey, but if there was a time for it, this was it. And anyway it was a lot cheaper than beer.

  I brought the whiskey back to my room. I pulled down my cot again and started drinking. I took it like medicine, in as few swallows as possible, not mixed with anything. I didn’t want to savor it, I just wanted to get it down. I emptied one bottle and started on the other. It burned a raw runnel down my throat like gasoline, like pesticide.

  After a time I got dizzy, but my mood hadn’t improved. A few more drinks, and I tried laughing at myself—weren’t drunks happy?—but the most I could do was chuckle. There was no relief in the laughter, but it distanced me from myself, or I told myself it did.

  I put down the second bottle and lay back on the cot. The room was swirling around. I was underwater. Time had slowed, too; when I decided to put my arm under my head, there was a long delay before my arm did it.

  I turned my head, and after a short blank time I focused my eyes and looked over at Increase, sleeping in his bed. Time had not only slowed down for him, it had completely stopped; he lay in the same position as he had been in when I’d started drinking.

  Then I had to go to the bathroom, so I stumbled down the hall. I was surprised at how little the drink had affected me. After I urinated I stood there for a moment, feeling my stomach squirming, but I didn’t let myself get sick. I was tempted to, but I didn’t want to donate the therapeutic effects of the whiskey to the toilet. I went back to the room, and lay down.

  Sky was still there, in my brain, but my actions, her reactions, my further actions, her lack of reaction, all felt now more like theories than lived events. The whiskey had not made me unconscious, not made me forget, not made me happy, but at least I was detached from my life, looking down on it like how as a school kid I had watched a little house lizard dying on the wall of my house. My dad had been painting the kitchen. The lizard had begun to walk across the wall, and had gotten stuck in the wet paint. I had watched it struggling, moving less and less as the time went by, and I had felt nothing but a mild curiosity. Later my reaction horrified me; now I envied that way of seeing things.

  I felt so tired. My eyes closed, and eventually I fell asleep.

  I slept for almost three hours, and woke with dizziness and a headache and a desperate need to visit the bathroom again. Returning to the room, I saw that it was nearly daybreak. There was a soft light outside, just outlining the window shade, and I could hear a few tentative birds peeping from the mango trees near the dorm. Increase was still sleeping.

  The Mekhong bottles lay at the foot of my cot. I hadn’t realized how strong they smelled. They clinked against each other as I swung my feet down off the cot. Then, since I was still dizzy, I lay down again. But I couldn’t sleep anymore, and I kept thinking of Sky, of what I should have done or said differently, or of what she might be doing right now. And about who she was with.

  I had hoped that some time spent in oblivion might give me a chance to get a hold of myself, to pull myself back together. Time to let my brain accept things and move on. But my thoughts of Sky were as immediate and cutting as before.

  And Increase was still sleeping.

  A few weeks later I was in the dorm room with Increase, running a case study and bouncing a ball off the wall. He was on his bed, but he wasn’t sleeping. He was reading a comic book.

  The ball rolled under his bed. I couldn’t see where it was, so I reached for it, feeling around with my hand.

  I touched something soft. I pulled it out to see what it was.

  A hair band. I recognized it.

  “Hey, this is Sky’s. Was she over here looking for me or something?”

  Increase didn’t put the book down, but he froze.

  “Well?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s been there all this time.”

  “Did you see her over here or not?”

  “How should I know?”

  “What do you mean? I’m just asking—”

  He was mad now. “She came over here two nights ago, when you were out. And she—” He said it all in one breath, and then stopped. “Things are over between you two anyway. I didn’t plan it. It’s just she is really cute, and you’re right that girls don’t usually—” He looked up and saw my face and shut up.

  I tried to say something, I don’t know what, but nothing came.

  And then he started to say something, but before the words could leave his mouth I lunged at him. The blow was badly aimed; I could hardly see through the haze. But it was a solid punch, just at his left eyebrow. He fell back, his book falling to the floor, and when he got up I hit him again. He sat on the floor groggily, holding his hand to his head. I left.

  I sat down in the hall outside my room. I wanted to run away, go somewhere. I wanted to get out of myself. I wanted to sleep.

  Victory called the next night. He told me that he and dad were coming up to visit me next weekend. They’d jam themselves into an all-night common bus, next to the laborers and maids and chickens in baskets, and the bus would stop at every little town, and people would try to sell Pepsi and skewers of chicken and sticky rice at each one, pushing them through the open windows, and the red dust would cover everything. When I met them at the bus station in town they’d be puffy-eyed and smelling of sweat, in rumpled peasant clothes.

  “Don’t come up,” I said. “I’ll come down.”

  “Dad says he wants to see the campus.”

  See where his money was going. “It’s not much to look at.”

  “We can meet some of your classmates. We’ll take them out for dinner.”

  Lord. Roast chicken or fish, with green papaya salad and sticky rice. I could just picture Sky sitting on the floor and eating with her hands like a peasant.

  “Don’t come up.”

  “Why not, Horse? We’ll have some fun. You can’t study all the time.”

  “Don’t. Please, don’t.”

  Victory’s face went dark. “You’re ashamed of us? Is that right? Dad is paying for your life there. Remember that? Do you?”

  “Leave me alone! Dad is paying—I know that! But I’m going to escape—I’m going to be big, and make a lot of money, and then I can throw it back in his face! I’ll have new friends, and a new life, and I don’t need you to embarrass me!”

  “We’re all Thai—and there are still more of us than there are of you. Horse, you should—”

  “No! No ‘should’s! I’ll call you when I graduate. I’ll send you some money then. Until then, just leave me alone! I don’t need you! All you do is drag me back down!”

  I hung up.

  We’re all Thai. Right. Sleepers and non-sleepers: we might as well be different species. But he was right. We’re Thai, and sleeper or not we remain so. Take away sleep, and you get all those extra hours in a day to do things. But we’re Thai, we’re not Singaporeans or Koreans or damned Japanese. Hyper-accelerate the Thai world and you have more time for eating and playing and videos and talking, and for wallowing in yourself. We’re just pretending to be Asian Tigers, putting on the show—no sleep, Westernized lifestyles, chasing the money, the honor—but we’re still water buffaloes under the skin, patient, content to be.

  I still wanted to sleep.

  I got through the rest of the quarter. I failed Ecolaw and English. I got put on academic probation. I spent most of my time in Bird’s room. It was crowded, but they didn’t complain.

  The next semester I applied for a new roommate. I saw Increase around the campus sometimes, and twice I saw him w
ith some girl. Not Sky. Once I saw Increase napping on a bench under a papaya tree, a little smile on his face. I didn’t wake him.

  Copyright © 2010 Tim McDaniel

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  SHORT STORIES

  EVE OF BEYOND

  Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg

  2011 marks the fortieth year that Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini have been collaborators. Together they’ve published four novels (one science fiction, three suspense) and more than fifty SF, fantasy, and mystery short stories. On his own, Bill has written seventy novels and three hundred short stories of various types, as well as four books of nonfiction. In 2008, he was the proud recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s highest award, the Grand Master. That same year, Barry won the Locus Award for Best Nonfiction Book for Breakfast in the Ruins.

  I am alone in my private office, virtually previewing Eve of Beyond’s new fall line of menswear, when my son and partner Arthur bursts in without knocking.

  My office is both sanctum and sanctuary. A place of dignified quiet, as befits the founder of the originating and most successful manufacturers of inexpensive, all-season wardrobes for the soon-to-depart. I take pardonable pride in my company, which has held steadfast in the market for twenty-five years. On one wall is a hologram of our tasteful slogan: Leave your loved ones all they deserve. On another is an artfully framed copy of our first AARP online advertisement, which I wrote when I was Arthur’s age and which set the standard not only for Eve of Beyond but for all our many imitators: “A Message for All Advanced Seniors: Why throw away your hard-earned savings on clothing you will most likely wear for only a short time? For a fraction of the price charged by most retail outlets, Eve of Beyond will provide you with beautiful non-durable tunics and other garments guaranteed not to outlast you, and which your heirs can, without guilt, embarrassment, or financial loss, simply discard after your passage.”

  Arthur, however, does not respect either my privacy or the nobility of our chosen profession. A man of thirty-four with the fumbling gestures and naiveté of a teen-ager, he rushes red-faced to my desk, waving some sort of document and shouting excited words I am unable to comprehend until I give the disconnect command to the virtual display.

  “Ninety million global credits! Ninety million global credits!”

  “Lower your voice,” I say. “I’m not deaf.”

  “Ninety million global credits,” he repeats. His face is puffed with avarice and self-importance, the dimples in his cheeks like miniature dollar signs. “That’s how much they’re offering now, up five million.”

  “How much who is offering for what?”

  “Heaven-Sent Garments, of course. For Eve of Beyond.”

  I look at him with a mixture of tolerance and distaste. He is, after all, my son—all I have left now that Susan is gone. But he is also overweight, overbearing, and something of a scoundrel. I wonder, not for the first time, where Susan and I went wrong.

  “I thought I told you not to contact those people,” I say.

  “I didn’t,” he says. “They contacted me. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime offer; I’ve already given it to our lawyers to look over. All we have to do is sign and we’ll be rich. I can buy that ski lodge in Aspen I’ve always wanted. You can retire, go anywhere you want, even live in luxury in New Europe—”

  “And wouldn’t you like that?” I say. “Well, forget it. How many times do I have to tell you and the board and the lawyers that I refuse to sell?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said, old man? Ninety million global credits!”

  Old man. Arthur seems to think that I am as feeble as many of our customers. The business has taken over his insufficient faculties, to the point where he sees senility everywhere—including in his vigorous, fifty-nine-year-old father.

  “It could be a hundred and fifty million,” I say, “and still I wouldn’t agree to sell.”

  “Why not? Why are you so damn stubborn? Heaven-Sent owns all our major competitors already, as well as most of the regular clothing manufacturers. We can’t hold out on them much longer, they’ll grind us out of business if we try. They’re big, they’re enormously powerful—”

  “And corrupt,” I say. “They’ve taken an honorable, even a noble business and turned it into something shadowy, money-grubbing, conscienceless.”

  “Shadowy? What do you mean, shadowy?”

  “Exactly what I said. I don’t trust them. I don’t trust their motives.”

  “Their motives are the same as ours, only more ambitious. They’ll sell far more Eve of Beyond clothing than we do and double or triple our present profit margin.”

  So cold and cynical, this son of mine. At times like this I wish I had never granted him a full partnership in Eve of Beyond.

  “You know that’s not the only reason I founded the company,” I say, hurt. “We’re a compassionate business, filling a genuine human need. Heaven-Sent Garments has no compassion. They worship at the shrine of Mammon.”

  Arthur wipes his round face. His cheeks and forehead are the color of port wine. Apoplectic, I think sadly. I won’t be surprised if he has a stroke or a coronary before the age of forty-five.

  “I suppose you’ve been listening to those scurrilous rumors,” he says.

  “What scurrilous rumors?”

  “The ones spread by the Hereafter Habiliments people. They’re just bitter because they held out too long, were forced to sell to Heaven-Sent for fewer credits than they hoped to get.”

  “I haven’t heard any such rumors. What do they say?”

  “Never mind what they say. The rumors aren’t true, that’s the point,” Arthur says. “I’m not going to argue with you any more about this, old man. You turned over 40 percent of Eve of Beyond to me, remember? I shouldn’t have to keep reminding you of that. I intend to sell Heaven-Sent my interest immediately and urge the members of the Board to do the same, and if you hold out, then you’ll just have to suffer the consequences.”

  He turns, stomps to the door, flings it open, slams it behind him. I stare at the closed door, consumed by sadness and anger. Mostly anger. Arthur does not understand and never will what Eve of Beyond means to me.

  I founded the company as a practical and benevolent service industry, to right what I believed then and still believe now was a terrible wrong: that the soon-to-depart were either compelled to pay the same price for clothing as healthy people twenty to thirty years younger, or to purchase whatever poor quality castoffs could be found in the ever-dwindling number of charitable thrift shops. This inequity was a result, of course, of society’s refusal to cope with death in a realistic fashion. Perishability in the clothing business, I determined, could and should be a virtue rather than a point of contention. Operating on that simple principle, Eve of Beyond has not only achieved success but in its own way has rewarded, even honored, its thousands of satisfied customers.

  But now this business I have nurtured for so long is in imminent danger of being taken over by Heaven-Sent Garments—a division of International Interests Corporation, another of the vast, soulless conglomerates that seek to control all types of global commerce. If they gain control of Eve of Beyond, they will have a monopoly on the nondurable market. And they will certainly destroy the firm’s principles and respectability by cutting corners, establishing “more cost efficient” means of ministering to the clothing needs of the soon-to-depart by downsizing to the cheapest synthetics. All service and customer dignity would be lost.

  I am even more adamantly determined now not to sell. And I must try to prevent Arthur from selling. We each own 40 percent of the voting stock; the other 20 percent is divided among the five members of our board of directors. Those five surely will continue to side with me as they have in the past.

  There is a board meeting scheduled in three days; I make arrangements for it to be moved up to tomorrow afternoon. Then I attempt to find out the nature of the “scurrilous rumors” Arthur allud
ed to by getting in touch with George Metz, a former employee who, with my blessing, left Eve of Beyond to form Hereafter Habiliments a dozen years ago. He and I have maintained a cordial relationship despite the fact that we are, or were, competitors. I do not believe that he would spread rumors of any type, no matter what Arthur says, but he may well have an idea of what is going on with Heaven-Sent. But I am told by a woman in George’s former office that his services were terminated after the takeover. An effort to reach him at home also fails. I leave a video message, asking him to contact me at his earliest convenience.

  No one else I talk to in the clothing profession is willing or able to discuss the rumors. Everyone seems afraid of Heaven-Sent, or rather of its global parent, International Interests Corporation. I sense dark and ugly things swimming beneath the surface of their operations. Perhaps I should be afraid, too, but I’m not. Righteous anger still dominates my emotions.

  I determine to have another talk with Arthur, but he has left for the day and is not expected back. No one seems to know where he can be found.

  A short while later I receive two VisPhone calls. The first is from Harold Reedus, of Reedus, Reedus, and DeCarlo, the law firm that has represented Eve of Beyond since its inception. Harold is the son of Benjamin Reedus, an old friend and confidante who, unhappily, retired to Florida two years ago. He possesses a cunning legal mind, but like Arthur and unlike his father, has little or no compassion. Another son who has failed to live up to his parents’ hopes and expectations. After a careful review of the offer sheet from Heaven-Sent, Harold says, he considers it not only fair and reasonable but quite generous. He strongly advises me to sell, and says that he will tender the same advice to members of the Board “in the best interests of all concerned.” Nothing I say to the contrary has any effect on his position.