“The species is, yeah.”
“Why that name?”
“I don’t know.” That human male sipped his drink and showed his smiling teeth, and he said, “But they have incredible minds, I know. Something you might like to research, if you get the chance.”
The other man said, “Maybe,” and then sipped hot water filled with cooked leaves.
“Where do you see my face?”
In the shade of the bristlecone. The torturer and his victim were standing close enough to touch each other, but they didn’t. Death was impossible. The 31-1 might flirt with time, but he understood that nothing could erase the existence of those two humans. Yet here he was, the witness, feeling as close to terrified as he had ever been. Intriguing, wasn’t it? Fear and the impossibility of guessing what would happen next: That is what made him more alert than ever. The realities were being sliced thinner than ever. That’s how it felt. Everything important was visible to him, and that included how fingers and the thumb held the terrible gun that could lead to a reality where a human mind was transformed into light and vapor.
“You don’t want to leave a witness,” said Ash.
The 31-1’s good friend was terrified. That showed in his stiff face and those huge eyes and the tone of his voice. Sunshine colored the drops of sweat that lay hard as jewels on a face that in every other existence looked composed.
Ash said, “You should kill the 31-1 first.”
What did that face say?
“That would leave enough juice to finish me off too.”
No, the 31-1 realized that his fear could grow worse.
It was worse.
But the furious man laughed at the suggestion. “No, I’ll shoot you and then I’ll kill myself. I don’t care what he sees.”
“Sees and remembers for ten million years,” Ash said. “Is that what you want? To have this moment locked inside that alien mind?”
“I want you to die.”
“And you’re promising to follow me into death.”
The other man started to respond.
“To stop your pain,” Ash said.
The plasma gun needed a stronger grip. The next realities were centered on fingers wrapping tight around the small handle.
“But if your pain is so awful, why are you alive today?” Ash asked. “All these centuries and no end to your suffering. Yet you managed not to kill yourself. Because you needed to kill me first. Just that possibility was enough. Is that what you’re claiming?”
“Yes.”
“No. You’re wrong and you’re silly.”
The other man become less angry and more angry.
How was that possible?
“Your misery hasn’t been that awful,” Ash said. “I mean, you tolerated it. Didn’t you? You were able to function. It’s not as if you haven’t lived for decades carrying that gun with you, and all it would have taken was one dark thought and the press of the finger… and you would be dead and past pain and free.”
“Shut up,” said the angry man. His face was taut and the lips started to bleed where teeth cut into the flesh.
“Maybe you came here for some reason other than revenge,” said Ash.
The other man spat blood, saying, “No.”
“Yes.”
“Never,” he said. “No.” Then he was blowing air without speaking, eyes wide and lost and very simple.
“What else am I?” Ash asked.
Then he paused, and the other man asked, “What’s that?”
Ash took a deep breath and exhaled, and then he said, “In the entire galaxy, who knows your mind better than me? And who has the necessary skills to take away all of your misery?”
The angry man stopped breathing, and his eyes closed tight.
“This is my offer,” Ash said. “I’ll do that first. I’ll work at your mind until both of us are satisfied. You’ll be free of pain, and I’ll be happier too. Then you kill me. If you wish. And our friend will watch it happen, or you can use my private home to do whatever you want to me.”
The other man opened his eyes, and with both of his hands and both arms, he pointed his gun at the torturer.
Ash seemed smaller, his eyes narrow and wet.
“How?” the vengeful man asked. “How can you take my pain away?”
Ash knelt.
And then Ash stood, hands filled with his weapon of choice. “You’ve done nothing for centuries but suffer and chase me,” he said. “But meanwhile, I’ve applied my time to learn all kinds of useful tricks.
“So what do you say, my friend?
“And where do you see my face?”
In the highest branches of a bristlecone that has grown up the canyon wall and down the canyon wall. Its roots drink from the river, and Ash sits where he can see a sun that isn’t as bright as it should be. And the wind is weaker than ever. And something about the voice and eyes and the look of the ageless skin… something in all of that has changed.
“I see you everywhere,” the 31-1.
Offering one of his hands to that odd human hand, knowing just how it feels when they touch.
Sidewalks
MAUREEN F. MCHUGH
Maureen F. McHugh made her first sale in 1989 and has since made a powerful impression on the science fiction world with a relatively small body of work, becoming one of today’s most respected writers. In 1992, she published one of the year’s most widely acclaimed and talked-about first novels, China Mountain Zhang, which won the Locus Award for Best First Novel, the Lambda Literary Award, and the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and which was named a New York Times Notable Book as well as a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards. Her story “The Lincoln Train” won her a Nebula Award. Her other books, including the novels Half the Day Is Night, Mission Child, and Nekropolis, have been greeted with similar enthusiasm. Her powerful short fiction has been collected in Mothers & Other Monsters and After the Apocalypse.
Here she deals compassionately with the story of a refugee who has lost everything. And we mean, everything.
I hate when I have a call in Inglewood. It’s still the 1990’s in Inglewood and for all I know, people still care about Madonna. Los Angeles County has a forty bed psych facility there. Arrowhead looks like a nursing home; a long one story building with a wide wheelchair ramp and glass doors and overly bright, easy to clean floors. I stop at the reception desk and check in.
“Rosni Gupta,” I say. “I’m here to do an evaluation.”
The young man at the desk catches his bottom lip in his teeth and nods. “Oh yeah,” he says. “Hold on ma’am. I’ll get the director.” He has an elaborate tattoo sleeve of red flowers, parrots, and skulls on his right arm. “Dr. Gupta is here,” he says into the phone.
I also hate when people call me Dr. Gupta. I’m a PhD, not a medical doctor. I’m running late because I’m always running late. That’s not true of me in my personal life. I’m early for meeting friends or getting to the airport but in my work there are too many appointments and too much traffic. Being late makes me anxious. I’m a speech pathologist for Los Angeles County working with Social Services. I’m a specialist; I evaluate language capacity and sometimes prescribe communication interventions and devices. What that means is that if someone has trouble communicating, the county is supposed to provide help. If the problem is more complicated than deafness, dyslexia, stroke, autism, learning disability, or stuttering, all the things that speech therapists normally deal with, I’m one of the people who is brought in. “Devices” sounds very fancy, but really, it’s not. Lots of times a device is a smartphone with an app. I kid you not.