Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013 (31 page)

Avianna looked deeply and sincerely and adorably contrite. "Mister Matson—Kioga. Please forgive us. We do not know any powerful people who could come to our aid. The local authorities are all in the pockets of Conquistador. Someone like you represented our only hope. When you descended among us, it was like an angel arriving from heaven. But still, we suspected you would brush off any solicitations we made openly, so we had to bring you here under our control. Our tactics were heavy-handed, yes. But can't you accept them as a genuine expression of our helplessness?"

Exercising his imagination and empathy, Kioga had to admit to himself that he probably would have followed the same course, were their situations reversed. Life outside the Science Parks, he already knew, bred desperation and ethical shortcuts, and this incident merely confirmed his estimation of the scene.

"No, I guess not. Your intentions weren't evil or selfish. But still, kidnapping someone—"

Avianna hurled herself around Kioga's neck, squeezed him tightly, kissed both his cheeks, then unpeeled herself and bounced back, before he could possibly even respond with any gesture, fraternal or lewd. All the Colombians were smiling, even the anonymous muscle.

"Oh, I knew you would be on our side, Kioga! Surely, victory is ours now!"

"What exactly am I supposed to do?"

"We will reveal our plans in a moment. But first, let us have a small meal. It is well past noon."

Kioga pondered this previously unremarked passage of time: long hours after he was due back at Parque Arví. What would Mallory be feeling? She would surely be worried, instrumental in searching for him, raising hell. Best to get this unanticipated chore over with quickly, so he could resume his normal life.

Lunch practically brought tears to Kioga's eyes, it tasted so good: arepas, those ubiquitous corn pancakes, filled with salmon and shrimp, with a big cool glass of fresh guanabana juice.

"I am so glad you like my cooking," said Avianna.

Wasting no postprandial time, his captors bundled Kioga into a Baolong Motors SUV. Blinking in the sunlight, he discerned that Hernán's lab was still within the city. No point in hiding its location, he guessed, since he knew Avianna's identity already.

Hernán, driving, and Avianna, shotgun, sat up front, Kioga sandwiched behind between the guards. They headed southwest, steadily climbing out of the valley-nestled city center.

"What we wish you to do," Avianna said, "is merely to present yourself at the offices of Conquistador. Explain who you are. They will be very impressed. Everyone knows and respects the Science Parks. Ask for a tour of the waste stream processing. We are betting that Hernán's bug will be present. Steal a sample somehow. This is the only tricky part. But it can be as simple as getting your sleeve wet in the slurry. Just do not arouse their suspicions. Then, when you leave, we will pick you up, claim the sample, and your part in the affair is over. You can go back to the Science Parks with our thanks, and forget you ever knew us."

Kioga contemplated the chore. It seemed trivial, harmless, safe. "Okay."

Climbing, twisting, climbing, Kioga noted changes in terrain, vegetation, and human settlement. Amid the fantastical foliage, he witnessed large swaths of poverty and rampant want, suffering, and a makeshift, make-do existence. Here, firsthand, as impactful as a trash fire, was the backwardness and lack he was intent on ameliorating. Alien and incomprehensible in many respects, the scene nonetheless whispered enticingly to him, a parent calling back a changeling son.

Surprisingly, despite the squalor and material scarcity, many of the people looked happy and content.

"Avianna."

"Yes?"

"You really picked me out of all the Science Park people?"

Looking back, she smiled. "There is much public data about all of you. But your profile was the most congenial."

Kioga sat silent for a while.

"Avianna."

"Yes?"

"What will you get out of all this?"

"If my brother is a rich man, I am sure he will be good to me."

"S
í
,"
said Hernán.

"I think I might like to study medicine. I trained as an EMT for a time, but I had to cease my courses out of necessity."

"Well, maybe I could help somehow. That is, if I ever return here."

"Perhaps."

Two hours passed in relative silence. The SUV finally stopped at an empty portion of road high in the mountains. Fenced-off property stretched along one side of the tarmac.

"This is our rendezvous spot. We will come back in three hours. The gate to the Conquistador operations is about half a kilometer down the road, around that bend. We must leave you here. Otherwise, we will come under their surveillance."

Kioga let himself out of the vehicle. "How do you know I won't just get help and never return?"

Avianna bestowed a broad smile. "But you gave us your word, Kioga."

The SUV made a gravel-crunching three-point turn.

"Goodbye, Kioga. Thank you, and good luck!"

Kioga watched them go, then walked around the bend.

He could see the gated entrance and guard shack, all razor wire and robotic antipersonnel emplacements.

The booth was manned by three armed security workers. Kioga straightened his rumpled jacket and went up to them. They regarded him vigilantly until he explained himself, then seemed to relax a trifle.

"Señor Matson, we will take your biometrics now to confirm your identity."

"Of course."

After he had been tera-scanned, Kioga grinned.

Then the alarms sounded, louder than Armageddon.

Kioga took a step or three backward.

"Mister Matson, stop—you are under arrest! Please come peacefully."

Kioga was ten meters away and running before he had formed any conscious impulse.

The taser barbs caught him in the butt and lower back. He spasmed like a gaffed fish and went down, head aimed, he noted clinically, straight at a sizable jagged roadside boulder.

Jimmy Velvet arrived in Kioga's Parque Arví hospital room while Kioga was replaying for the
nth
time on his phone the news accounts of his embarrassing escapades. His friend beamed, carrying a bottle and several gifts. Kioga ignored him momentarily. He was too intent on marveling at what an allegedly humorous spin the announcers had managed to put on his near-fatal contretemps.

Missing person alert! Unflattering photo flashed onscreen. Last seen in dodgy native company. Anonymous accusation delivered, proclaiming sudden terrorist sympathies and affiliations in the Science Park renegade. Grudging admission by his fiancée that he might very well have gone dingo. "Just not himself lately." Then all revealed as one laughable chain of mistakes, once Kioga had been apprehended and debriefed.

Of course, Mallory's reactions hurt the most. Her swift betrayal. And then her non-apology. And when she had asked Kioga, fresh out of the ICU, to donate his sperm for an early insemination, given the unavoidable delay in their wedding—

Well, journalistic accuracy would have demanded an update to amend her status to ex-fiancée.

Jimmy set down his offerings. He unwrapped one of the packages and helped himself to a chocolate. Munching contentedly, he looked inquisitively at his friend before speaking.

"You really are a right mug, aren't you?"

"Say what?"

"A sucka. Gullible to the bone."

Kioga took offense. "I don't really think so! I just employ common human decency, and a willingness to expect the best of everyone. At least, until they show me they're malicious."

"And that naïve philosophy almost got you killed. That brain hemorrhage you incurred in tumbling tasered-arse-over-teakettle nearly did you in. It didn't help that the Conquistador guards took close to an hour to summon medics. Lots of dead neurons you could ill afford to lose. Well, perhaps that little replacement wodge of cloned cortical cells out of the vat will render you good as new!"

Kioga ran a finger along the healing surgical incision on his skull. "I certainly hope so."

"Maybe you'll be better than before. Less naff. I just hope there are no side effects from the new bits! Any sudden desires to crossdress? Maybe some fresh new talents emerged from the subconscious, such as the ability to speak Khmer, or to dance
en pointe?"

Jimmy had Kioga laughing so hard, tears rolled down his cheeks. "No, Jimmy, nothing like that!"

"Splendid, then! Wonderful to have you back, more cautious or not!"

For the first time since his surgery, Kioga felt as if he might live down this dumb brush with infamy.

Jimmy forked up another sweet, and changed the subject slightly. "I take it there's no chance of you and Mallory getting back together? Normally at such a decisive break, I'd ask how she was in the sack, in pursuit of my own interests."

Kioga made a rueful face. "You're welcome to her, Jimmy."

"No, I think not, given the altogether too utilitarian and disloyal face she's shown." Jimmy ran a finger around one incisor to clear away some sticky caramel. "That Avianna gal, however. Another story entirely. And rich to boot! Why, she and her brother practically own Conquistador Mining now. Not to mention his patents. Even the countersuit against them for property damage and trespass was dismissed. Devilish sly. Positively Machiavellian! Sending you as a diversion, while they broke in elsewhere. Brilliant!"

"Agreed. Though being the actual catspaw makes one slightly less appreciative of their ingenuity."

Jimmy arose. "Well, it's all water under the bridge now. It's not like your world will ever intersect with hers again. Cognitive homogamy rules, after all. So long, Ky. Until we next share a conference table."

Kioga's lunch arrived half an hour after Jimmy's departure. The young male orderly placed the tray reverently on the bedside table and made sure to direct Kioga's attention to it.

"Something special today, sir."

Kioga lifted the aluminum dome off the plate. The heady aroma of salmon-andshrimp-stuffed arepas wafted out.

And the meal came with a note in a feminine hand.

A VERY SMALL DISPENSATION

Sheila Finch
| 4605 words

Sheila Finch tells us her story is based on a real event, and though she's taken some liberties, the characters are all in the historical record. "I'd wanted to work with this material for a very long time, but I couldn't find the right approach until the morning I suddenly realized the true identity of the hired man." The author's very first professional sale, "A Long Way Home," appeared in our Mid-December 1982 issue.

The sun sank through the cloud wall over the Pacific. By the darkening window, Pat squinted at her knitting needles. Cold wind fell down the chimney and sparked the embers of a dying fire. She really should get up and add another shovelful of coal, but that took energy, and she felt curiously lethargic this afternoon. Another stitch dropped! If her arthritic fingers, sensitive to cold since childhood, kept fumbling the stitches like this, her grandson would have visited and gone again before she'd finished the socks that were to be his Christmas gift. Robbie, brimming with youth and confidence, attending the university across the bay—first in the family. How proud of him she was.

Time to light the lamp.

In the sudden sputtering yellow, she saw the man in the open doorway, first his soldier's boots, then the drab trousers and cap, the heavy greatcoat, then his face still in shadow. He seemed not a day older than the first time she'd met him, one windy day in her childhood. He was tall and thin, his skin leathery and dark like a man who worked outdoors in all weathers.

"May I come inside?" he asked.

"Antonio, isn't it? Or do you go by another name now?"

"Antonio will do."

He moved into the room, leaving the door open. He shed his greatcoat and draped it over the back of a chair, and she was suddenly aware of the frayed tapestry on the armrests, its russet threads fading into washed out brown. She'd been meaning to replace the chair, or at least get antimacassars to hide the worn arms.

"You look well," he said.

One hand flew in an automatic gesture to smooth out the grey hair. Annoyed with herself, she caught it and returned it to the needle before another stitch could slide off. She hadn't always been jittery in this man's presence.

"Might as well say it," she said. "For my age."

"Please, do continue knitting. Your grandson will appreciate the socks' comfort where he's going."

"What do you mean?"

He held up a hand. "Patty."

She sighed at his use of her childhood nickname and bent over the stitches, but her hands were shaking now and the sock progressed slowly.

Antonio sat in the chair opposite her under the window. A silent companionship that made them seem like an old married couple, she thought. A smile lifted his lips briefly as if he knew what she was thinking. She'd always known he'd come for her someday.

The sun had disappeared, and night filled the sky. Tendrils of cold fog crept up from the bay, slipping into the room through places where San Francisco's long damp seasons had warped the window out of shape.

"Do you remember when we first met?" he asked, after a while.

"I was an eight-year-old child, Antonio!"

"A child who saw what adults missed."

There was something different about the stranger who joined them early in May. The grown-ups didn't seem to notice anything unusual. They'd been standing on windblown dirt outside a general store where the women bought provisions for their journey. There were trees, but they were thinner and not as leafy as the ones at home in Illinois, and the town itself was small and not at all like the one she'd been born in. Her older sister Ginny said it was going to get even more primitive after this. Patty didn't know what that word meant, but she didn't like how it sounded.

Nobody paid attention to her, clinging to Papa's leg as he questioned the stranger. They needed the man to help drive the stock on the coming trek and to lend a hand with the wagons in difficult spots. In return, the man could count on a hot meal once a day and a space under the wagons to sleep. One of the grownups, Mr. B, argued the man didn't have enough flesh on his bones to be much use to them, but Papa was firm. She understood that much of the men's talk; the rest of it wasn't interesting anyway. But she couldn't take her eyes off the stranger. He was as tall as Papa, who was taller than most of the other men, and he had sunburned skin like an Indian. His dusty jacket and stained trousers hung loose. His voice was deep. He carried a felt hat in one hand and gave his name as Antonio.