Asimov's Science Fiction: December 2013 (16 page)

Minine had already discovered something urgent in Completely Unmentionables.

The following evening Alsatia stayed late to help Throgmorton unpack the new shipments. Miss Douglas had chided the Thaliamajoran for losing touch with the basics of merchandising, now that heads of state were regular customers.

"G–s... I believe that I am now beginning to grasp Fashion-as-signified by the emblems and signifiers of women's undergarments," it remarked gratefully to Alsatia. "Alas, now I am puzzled by something else. Minine strives for a look that says..." "Tawdry."

"G–s... Yes, and 'sleazy,' and she achieves these with great consistency. But in your case I don't find anything in the Women's magemails that Miss Douglas has around the shop, or in the couturier vids. Take this item you are wearing now, the ensemble of velveteen, rubber-tubing, and... are these not the covers of old hard-back books?"

"Yeah. I found a bunch of them at the WellnessWill. Kinda tough to stitch together with the fabric."

"G–s... And the steel-toed shower slippers. The theme escapes me."

Alsatia reddened slightly. "I try to change my look faster than anybody can define it. My motto's 'one step ahead of meaning.' "

"G–s... So all this is original? Does that not make you a designer?" asked the alien, gesturing broadly with seven packages and a box cutter.

"I guess. For a clientele of one."

Received: from megafunds.com (GTPS V183.2-9 #21152) id (not for public release) via [email protected] To: Throgmorton [[email protected]]

Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2029 15:03:52-0500 (EST)

From: Felicity Finalli, President & CEO

Tiffany, Harrod & Bonwit-Pierce, Fenner et al.

Subject: Acceptable Offer?

Sir, We at Tiffany, Harrod & more are impressed with your refusal to desert the establishment and the employer who gave you your start in the luxury lingerie business. Frequently do we regret the days when the legality of personal firearms allowed a company to maintain such devotion.

It would be insensitive of us to push the matter further. Still, is there not some way that your goals (of solid Thaliamajoran origin I am sure) and our goal of unchallenged market dominance could all be met?

Please feel free to make any suggestions via encrypted reply.

"Honey, I think it's time we started thinking about selling our stories to the Rather show. They've been after me for a month." Minine and Alsatia could tell something was up. Miss Douglas's lawyer and some business types were huddling in her office. "How can you even consider that scuzzvid?"

"They pay top dollar, young lady. Top dollar. And they might cast me in the re-enactments, or use one of those computer thingies that makes it look like me. Virtuous reality. Then you get residuals."

Alsatia bit her choke-chain.

"You just watch," Minine advised, straining to read some more specific sign or portent through the firmly closed door, "we'll be out of a job by lunch."

"G–s... er, Miss Douglas? I'd like you to have this, before you go back to Offshore California." The alien proffered a small gift-wrapped box. "It's a small token from my home planet."

"Really, Mr. Throgmorton, I..." she took the box from him. "May I open it?"

Inside the box, cradled in crushed velvet, was a small clear tube. Taking the tube out, she could see something inside that resembled a dust-bunny.

"Could you explain this to me, Mr. Throgmorton?" she asked, uncertainly.

"G–s... Alas," Throgmorton's tendrils waved oddly, "it is impossible to convey the real significance of cultural icons to others, don't you find?"

But then the paparazzi spilled into the reception hall of the Park Plaza's original Manhattan hotel. The announcement of Tiffany, Harrod and more's new Throgmorton label of sensualwear, with designs by the shockingly up-to-the-instant Alsatia— "previously designer to an extremely select clientele"—had captured the attention of the entire world of fashion newsploitation. Eyebrows had been raised at rumors of an extraordinary buyout of Throgmorton's employer, and the catapulting of career salesgirl Minine Knudsen to chief buyer for the vid-order Naughties of Newark chain.

It was the classic story of "out-of-towner makes good in the big city, and remembers who got him there." It sold ad-spots. It warmed hearts.

There just had to be a scandal in it somewhere!

Though rich beyond her bridge club's wildest dreams, Miss Douglas still had them over to her sensible Bel Aire mansion once a month. When her eyes would drift to the little ivory casket that held, as she had told them, a small but precious gift from an old acquaintance, they would try to get her to talk about her famous Thaliamajoran friend. "What brought that up again?" she would always complain. "You know I don't really approve of people from other planets."

Greg Bossert lives in Marin County, California, under a vast untidy heap of pixels, audio samples, and words, and spends his weekdays wrestling with the same at Lucasfilm. This is his fifth story for
Asimov's.
He wrote the original draft over a dark silent night at the 2010 Clarion Writers' Workshop, and would like to gratefully acknowledge the help from his Clarion colleagues in finding the human story in a strange and alien landscape, where fear and hope alike can...

"It's
very
simple," Ki Ninurta said into the darkness, as quietly as her torn voice would allow. "If you take another step, you die. We all die. So we wait."

"No fucking way it's a CoL," Ben said, out of the black.

"Cawl?" Andrea said. "I thought you said it—"

"Cee-Oh-Ell. Circle of Life. A Yu Stigmergic Colony. A Bloom." Ki said.

No response from Andrea. Ki thought the Earth woman was about four meters to her right, and a step or two ahead. Ben was in between them, a little closer to her than to Andrea. And a few meters behind; that was the scary part. If he was over the edge of the Bloom, she must be halfway to the center.

"No fucking way," he said again.

"I can smell it," Ki said.

"The hell you can."

She could. It was unmistakable underneath the normal spice and bite of Ardun's atmosphere, unforgettable. It was yeast and vinegar and semen-stained sheets. It was fecundity and decay. It was—she could see the glowing digits of her watch— three years, seven months, four days, twelve hours, thirty-four minutes.

A sniff, and Andrea in a small voice, "I can smell it too." Another sniff, and another, and Ki felt a chill.

"Do
not
cry. Water, salt are secondary triggers," she snapped.

"I can't stop," Andrea said.

"They initiate the second phase: mycorrhizal spikes and the grigs. They'll have a bit of difficulty getting through the skin without the coiltails softening you up first.

That might give you a second or two more before they rip you apart."

"I said I'm sorry."

"Quiet,"
Ki said, and over her, Ben said, "Fuck sake, Ninurta, the hell good that's gonna do? Lay off her."

A tremulous inhale from Andrea, but she said, "I caught them. The tears, I mean,

I think I caught them all."

"We'd already know," Ki said, "if you hadn't."

The flashlight was somewhere behind Ki and Ben; she'd heard it hit and roll when Ben had dropped it, saw the flash as it went dark. Loose connection. Or bad design. There was a lot of that with their equipment, which was half military surplus and half donation-in-kind from sponsors. Great way to dump unwanted inventory, that: grateful thanks from the university, maybe an honorary degree for the sponsor's CEO, and they were out here fifty light years away with a flashlight not fit for a backyard sleepover.

Her right ear itched, where the lab-grown skin attached to the cartilage.

"I'm going to back up," Ben said. "I'll step into my footsteps."

"And you're going to do that how? It's pitch dark," Ki said. "I don't recommend feeling around for them."

"I jump backward, then, hard as I can. I can't be more than a meter or two into the Bloom, yeah? I can jump clear."

"All three of us are probably inside the edge. You just broke through first. And anyway, pulling your foot out of the crust is as likely to trigger the Bloom as anything else."

"We gotta do
something,"
Ben said.

"Like I said before, we wait for someone to notice that we are missing and come looking for us with a thermal scanner. It's the only rational option."

Ben grunted. "We didn't sign out," he said. He sounded defensive; Ki was, amongst other things, the project's safety officer. She would love to call him out on that idiocy, but...

"Neither did I," Ki said.

"Oh," Andrea said, very quietly.

"It's a small base," Ki said. "And there's just a handful of crew down off of Andrea's ship. Someone will figure it out."

"Why aren't we dead already?" Andrea asked, her voice steadier. "I mean, the way we hear it back on Earth, the Blooms of Ardun, one wrong step and..."

"Ask her," Ben said. "She's the fucking expert. And the fucking guinea pig, huh, Ninurta? And the whatchacallit, the lucky rabbit's foot. But that only works for her, I guess. Sure didn't help Laurent."

"It's complicated," Ki said.

"I
checked
the board," Ben said. "Before I brought her out. This whole area's supposed to be clear, everything between the lab complex and the ridge."

"Blooms move. You know that.
She's
from offworld, she's got an excuse," Ki replied. "Blooms
creep.
Like, a few meters, maybe a few dozen meters a day. I oughta know, I do the stats for the betting pool."

Ki hissed, though she'd known about it. A hundred people on planet, give or take, didn't leave a lot of space for secrets.

She said, "We don't really know anything about this world. People who think they understand an exoplanet get dead."

"There was nothing within half a klick. It's
your
fucking board." Ben's voice tremored, threatened to crack.

"Shhhh," Ki said. "Calm." She took a slow deep breath. The reek of the Bloom was too familiar, too intimate; those three years seven months four days should have dulled that memory. The dreams were sharp, though, when she let herself sleep.

The dark, the smell was
so
familiar, whether from memory or dream.
Which one are you?
she thought, of the Bloom.

Ki was crouched, left foot a little ahead of the right, left hand on her foot, right arm across her leg. Her heels were down; if she'd been up on her toes, like Earth people did, she'd have gone over already. She was from Gennissea, 22 percent higher gravity, and the corresponding level of common sense.

It had taken her about five minutes to settle into that position, trying to keep her weight constant, keep her feet from shifting.

"If either of you are still standing, you should try to—"

"I'm down," Ben said. "Squatting."

"Me too."

"Huh," Ki grunted. "Keep your heels down."

"Why didn't you bring a scanner?" Ki asked. "Even if you did check the board, you should have been prepared."

"You got a lab full of that crap for the taking. Us assistants, we gotta check them out," Ben said. "I didn't want it in the log. Out at night, with a visitor, that's the kind of shit ends up in your personnel record. Why the hell didn't
you
bring a scanner?"

Ki ran her tongue between her lip and teeth. Her ear itched like
hell.
"The scanners really aren't that effective after midnight; the heat signature has dissipated too much. The tracking board is more reliable."

"Yeah, right," Ben said, and snorted like he was going to spit. An audible swallow. "Damn, this thing stinks."

"I have to pee," Andrea said.

"Hold it," Ben said.

"I always have to pee after sex," Andrea said, like an accusation.

"Jesus, Ann."

"Andrea."

"Jesus,
bitch."

"He's right. Hold it," Ki said, flatly. She didn't need that in her head, the two of them lying on the talcum-soft sand; images that wrapped and clung and left her half blind with something that was part longing but mostly anger. She'd been dodging those images ever since she had run into the two of them on the ridge an hour ago. She had been lost in that bitter blindness as she led the little group back to base, not absolutely sure where they were, until Ben had taken a step that
crunched
and left them, all three, in that darkness.

"Think about something else," she said.

"No, seriously. What
were
you doing here without a scanner?" Ben said.

"As I said, the scanners aren't—"

"Bullshit. You get on my case about the scanner, you must think they're good for something. I went through your safety lecture my first day on-planet. Scarred into my damn memory, you standing up there looking like roadkill, telling us how dangerous this place can be. As if you weren't proof enough. And you always saying how much worse it is in the dark, when everyone knows you're out here walking around every damn night." And in a bad imitation of Ki's Gennissea accent, he said, " 'A walk out on the surface without careful preparation is suicide.' "

Ki's eyelid twitched, tugged with every heartbeat. She willed the silence back, her faithful companion across the dark watchful dunes, but Ben went on.

"You think you're safe out here, now you're got some Bloom in you? Or are you just too
smart
to get caught, when it's a death wish for us normal people?"

It wasn't just their voices; she could
smell
them under the fetor of the Bloom: a human and therefore alien odor of sweat and must and fear. The urge to flee that intrusion, to keep stepping forward toward understanding or oblivion, was suddenly so strong she almost shook with it. But that urge was as familiar as the dark and the silence. "No," she said.