Analog SFF, March 2012 (11 page)

"I—"

"Shhh. If you really dislike that job so much, find something else. Go back to school. Do something fun. Find yourself. I'll still be here.” She tapped my chest. “It's
you
I love."

"I . . . There are things you don't know. The money doesn't come—"

But suddenly, she wasn't paying attention. “No!” she screamed. “No, no, no!” She was sitting up now, arms out from beneath the covers. “No!"

Even in what little light made its way through the curtains, I could see freckles on her arm. Freckles that had never been there before. Freckles that seemed to be glowing, ever so slightly.

"No!” A panicked look my way. “Ohmygod! No!” She grabbed me, hugged me fiercely. “I told you we were always broke. I was always afraid there wouldn't be enough. But that was before . . . I'm sorry. Ohmygod! No!"

Suddenly, my right arm itched. No dots for me. Mine were tiger stripes, harder to see in the dimness, but visible enough.

I showed them to her. Couldn't find anything to say. She'd produced a panicked torrent of words, but I felt as though my world had suddenly come to a halt.

There were sirens in the distance. Probably a whole SWAT team, like the one that swooped down on poor farmer Bart.

Somehow, that gave me the words. “We've done nothing wrong! Just tendered our resignations in a rather . . . unusual . . . way.” I looked at my tiger-striped forearm. Knew it was listening. “There are indeed false alarms!” I shouted at it. “The sensors may be right, but
what are they sensing?"

There were boots on the stairs.

If you're about to be arrested in the arms of the love of your life, do you spend those precious seconds holding her, or grab for clothing? I pulled her to me, kissed her, then whispered in her ear, hoping our ‘wear couldn't catch it. “Farmer Bart got out.” It was more a declaration of faith than certainty. But nothing meant anything if he hadn't. Not that she had any idea what I was talking about.

I gave her the name of the hardware store. “I have no idea how long they're going to keep us, or what's going to happen while we're gone. But if you can't find me any other way, tell the proprietor where I can find you."

"Why not your mother?"

"Because she's the one who always knew there was a better way.” Because she really was, after all, political. The worst kind: the kind who didn't give a rip about politics.

Then the door burst in and I held her again, even as hands were pulling us apart. “Not political!” I shouted. “We just want to quit."

And then, absurdly, “My mother makes the best snickerdoodles. . . ."

Copyright © 2011 by Richard A. Lovett

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Some science fiction writers start as scientists. Not Alec Nevala-Lee. He always planned to be a writer, even going picking his college major with a literary career in mind. “I chose classical studies [at Harvard],” he says, though he admits he's now forgotten most of his Latin and Greek. “I always knew I would be a writer, so [I asked] what field would provide the most interesting toolkit for writing fiction: history, archaeology, linguistics, philosophy."

Growing up in Castro Valley, California, Nevala-Lee encountered
The X-Files
in middle school. “I was a huge fan,” he says. “It came out when I was just the right age."

He immediately began writing fanfic, and while his stories have since become very much his own, they still pay homage to his favorite TV show. “I enjoy stories set in the present day, on this planet, with fairly recognizable characters,” he says. “Most begin with unexplained events that seem almost paranormal. Then gradually an explanation appears. That's
The X-Files."

His first serious endeavor was a novel written at age 13, influenced mostly by Orson Scott Card and
Dune.
“At this point, only one copy remains,” he adds, “which is probably a good thing."

After a stint at a financial firm in New York City, he took up full-time writing, then moved to Chicago.

His first sale was to
Analog
("Inversus,” January/February 2004) but at the time he still had the day job in finance, and it was several years before he returned to the magazine's pages. The current story is the latest in a series of rat-a-tat sales.

Because Nevala-Lee is not a scientist, he often turns for inspiration to popular science magazines, like
Discover.
His normal approach is to look for seemingly unrelated articles, then try to connect them. His November 2011 story, “The Boneless One,” began when he read an article about an oceanographic expedition that is taking water samples every few miles and cataloging the genes of the bacteria they contain. Then he read an article about luminescent octopuses. “The result was a weird noir murder mystery on a research yacht,” he says. “Most of my stories come from that kind of collision between two unrelated subjects."

But science fiction may not be his literary mainstay. His first book,
The Icon Thief,
slated for April 2012, is a thriller set in the New York art world, with a sequel scheduled for later that year. “I see myself more as a suspense novelist,” he admits. Though he's quick to add that science fiction is his first love—though mostly for short stories or novelettes.

Luckily, he sees
Analog
as a premier market for his shorter works. “I'm drawn to the ‘toymaking’ aspects of science fiction,” he says. “The [stories] I've most enjoyed have been combinations of ideas. The
Dune
books combine Herbert's interest in ecology, the Middle East, oil politics, Bedouins, Lawrence of Arabia, and mystical traditions from across the world. Somehow it all comes together in a coherent whole. That's what I like—the fiction of connections."

[Back to Table of Contents]

It's hard to be an idealist in the real world, when different ideals can pull in different directions. . . .

Interviewer
: Who would you say are your literary forebears—those you have learned the most from?

Hemingway
: Mark Twain, Flaubert . . . Chekhov . . . Van Gogh, Gauguin, San Juan de la Cruz. . . .

—
The Paris Review
, 1958

A year after the war began, I found myself in Madrid, where I took a room at the Hotel Florida. In those lean months, breakfast usually consisted of little more than a few bits of dry bread from the night before, but one morning in the lobby, as I was nursing a cup of weak tea and some stale crusts, I noticed the smell of fresh coffee and fried ham drifting down from somewhere overhead.

I set my notes aside. Although I knew very well where the smells were coming from, I had a hunch it would mean trouble. In the end, though, I gathered up my things and took the elevator to the fourth floor. The two stories above had been shelled not long ago, and this was the highest level that was still occupied.

In his room, the door of which was open, Ernesto was seated by the window, a newspaper spread before him on the table. Looking around the cramped space, I took in the typewriter, the gramophone, and the cooking ring with its traces of breakfast. When my eyes reached the chair by the bed, I paused. Seated there, instead of the woman I had expected, was a friar in a cassock and glasses.

"Excuse me,” I said, taking a step backwards. “I didn't know you had company—"

Ernesto looked up from his newspaper, eyeing me through the steel rims of his spectacles. He was in his thirties then, his hair and mustache still black, the prow of his chest barely restrained by its dressing gown.

"No, have coffee with us,” Ernesto said. “You might find this interesting. The
padre
and I were speaking of miracles. I believe we had just reached the subject of the stigmata—"

Going over to the windowsill to get a cup of coffee, I studied the visitor more closely. At that point, a year into the civil war, several thousand clergymen had already died at the hands of the Loyalists, so I was impressed by any man brave enough to wear a cassock in Madrid. Taking my cup, I sank into the chair by the electric heater. “What about the stigmata?"

"Your American friend is a skeptic of the modern school,” the friar said, speaking in surprisingly good English. “He is willing to embrace any evidence that supports his political beliefs, but not if it contradicts them, not even something so compelling as the five wounds of Christ—"

Ernesto lit a cigarette. “I'm only saying that no miracle is required. Even if we discount the possibility of fraud, the mind can do strange things to the body. What you call divine intervention might be nothing but hysteria."

"But what if other factors are present?” the friar asked. “Consider the case that brings me here today. Yesterday, I arrived from Segovia, where I was asked to provide safe conduct for a woman who had been staying at our convent. Only four weeks ago, her body was racked with carcinoma. The doctors gave her, at most, a few months to live. Instead of resigning herself to death, she came to us, wanting nothing more than to pray to St. John—"

"St. John of the Cross,” Ernesto said for my benefit. “He is buried in Segovia."

"—to pray for his intervention,” the friar said, continuing without a pause. “For days on end, she prostrated herself in his chapel, taking only a little food and water. After two weeks, she began to tremble. The marks of the holy nails appeared on her hands and feet. In time, the stigmata went away. And when the wounds faded, her cancer, too, was gone."

"A good story,” Ernesto said. “But again, no miracle is required. Any doctor can tell you tales of spontaneous remission. Most of the time, the patient never really had cancer at all."

"But I have spoken to her doctor myself. There is no medical explanation. She was dying, but has recovered completely. And—"

The friar paused, as if wondering if he should speak further, then lowered his voice.
"And she is not the only one
. We know of at least four other cases in Madrid alone. All were men and women who visited the tomb of St. John in the past year. All were dying of cancer. And after they prayed for the saint's intervention, all were cured. What is this, then, if not a miracle?"

Ernesto shot me a glance. I could tell that he didn't believe a word, but he only turned back politely to the friar. “You say that this woman is in Madrid. Would it be possible for me to see her?"

"I was hoping you would ask,” the friar said. “She lives nearby, off the Gran Via."

"Good.” Ernesto rose, brushing the crumbs from his dressing down. “If you'd like to wait downstairs, I'll join you in a minute."

The friar bowed and left the room. As soon as he was gone, Ernesto went into the bathroom, leaving the door open so we could continue to talk. He had arrived in the city not long before, working for a syndicate as a war correspondent, and we had already become fast friends. “So what do you think?"

I finished my coffee and put the cup on the sill. “It's hard to believe that such a shrine could go unreported for so long. Lourdes doesn't have so many cures in a century. If it were real, we would have heard about it by now."

"That isn't necessarily true,” Ernesto said, reappearing in a fresh shirt, his hair wet. “It's dangerous to believe in miracles these days. Too many Catholics have died already. No, what I find more interesting is the timing. You've heard the talk of a Segovia offensive?"

"Only a few rumors,” I said, watching as Ernesto went to the armoire in the corner. Segovia, which lay across the mountains to the north, had been taken by the Nationalists in the early days of the war. It was widely assumed that the Loyalists would soon try to recapture the town from the Fascists.

Ernesto opened the armoire. “Well, this shrine is just outside Segovia. The town has already been bombed once. Churches have been burned to the ground. If I were this friar and wanted to save my monastery, I might try to convince our side that a miracle was taking place."

Inside the armoire, I saw row after row of contraband chocolate bars, canned foods, whiskey. “But why did he come to you?"

"He must want me to write about it. Maybe he thinks I'll influence opinion overseas, or hopes I'll spread word to the Loyalist command. It wouldn't be the first time I've been asked to do something like this."

Ernesto took a can of bully beef and a tin of milk from the nearest shelf, then closed the armoire. “Come on. We'll see this woman together. Maybe you'll get a story out of it, too—"

Going downstairs, we found the friar waiting for us in the lobby. Outside, the ground was strewn with broken glass, and fresh craters had been left by last night's bombardment. After walking for some time along the Gran Via, we found ourselves in an area that was relatively untouched by bombs. On the porch of the nearest house, in the shade of the overhang, sat a woman in black.

Removing our hats, we mounted the steps together. The woman watched us curiously. She looked to be in her late fifties, her features wrinkled and kind. The friar greeted her warmly, then introduced us, saying that we wanted to ask her some questions. Ernesto hung back, leaving the friar to do the talking, although his eyes studied the woman's face with what struck me as a predatory attentiveness.

As the friar questioned her, the woman replied softly. Yes, the doctors had told her that she was going to die. Yes, she had gone to pray at the tomb of the blessed saint, even though it meant going into Nationalist territory. And, yes, she had felt the Holy Spirit take hold of her body, leaving its marks on her flesh.

At the friar's urging, she showed us her hands. On the center of each palm, I saw a faint welt, no larger than a
peseta
piece. Each formed a neat circle, its edges cleanly demarcated. The welts had faded since their first appearance, she told us, but they still bothered her from time to time.

"You mentioned a doctor,” Ernesto said. “You've seen him since you got back?"

The woman glanced at the friar, who nodded. Yes, she said, she had seen the doctor, who had been amazed to find that her sickness was gone. Ernesto asked for the doctor's name, then took out the tins of food, which the woman, after a show of protestation, was persuaded to accept.