The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (10 page)

I turned to Isabella, unable to
speak. She could see the question in my eyes. She took a moment to fiddle with
the volume on the radio, then turned to me and began to explain.

“Accelerated cloning.” She
shrugged, her face still an emotionless mask, unreadable. She hesitated and I
thought for a moment that she wasn’t going to continue. I think she was as numb
as I was, shocked by the confrontation, the need to relive everything all at
once. Then: “I grew him when I thought you weren’t coming back.” A pause. “I
wanted to be close to you. I
needed
to be close to you.” It sounded like
she was pleading for forgiveness. I couldn’t believe her, couldn’t understand
how she could do this, how she could go to these incredible lengths. I shook my
head.

“Then why this?” I waved at the
jar of blood on the floor and the tubing coming out of the man’s—out of
my
—chest.
My voice was a hoarse whisper. “Why?”

“It didn’t work. He’s got no
mind. He’s not you. He’s just a body, a bag of blood and bones. I didn’t know
what to do.” I realized now that she was weeping, tears running in sparkling
tributaries down her cheeks, splashing her clothes. “And then it hit me.
O-Negative blood. Anyone can take a transfusion of O-Negative blood. If I
drained him I could sell it on, make a fortune. I’d already seeded him with
nanomachines, the moment he was fully formed. All I had to do was bag it up...”
She sobbed, coughing back on the tears. I think my face must have betrayed my
horror, my judgment. “
What else could I do
!” She broke down, collapsing
to her knees, her face in her hands.

I looked back at the body on
the table before me. “It was never me, Isabella. It never could have been.” And
then I did the only thing I could. I couldn’t let it live like this. I grabbed
for an implement from a nearby tray–a sharp, surgical scalpel–and thrust it
deep into his throat. It was soft and offered little resistance. The body
shuddered and began to spasm, but his eyes remained closed and no sound escaped
his lips. I pulled the scalpel out and thrust again, channeling all my anger,
my frustration, my fear into those blows.

“
No!
”

I heard Isabella scream behind
me and turned, realizing too late that she was rushing me from across the room.
She fell against me hard, sending us both sprawling to the floor. I jarred my
elbow sharply on the trolley and cracked my head against the tiles.

For a moment, the world turned
upside down. I lay there, dazed, the pressure of Isabella on top of me like a
dead weight. My head was spinning with pain. I tried to speak, but the weight
of her on my chest made it difficult to breathe. Gasping, I pulled my arms free,
then pushed her to one side, before rolling over and scrabbling up onto my
knees.

“Isabella? Are you okay?”

She was still, unconscious. Her
hair had spilled out across the floor and her face looked slack and peaceful,
all the tension, the concern, the confusion drained out of her. I blinked,
trying to get my bearings. One of the medical monitors was screaming, a howling
alarm to warn us that the man on the trolley had arrested, his heart failing,
the remaining blood draining out through the gaping hole in his throat. I
turned to Isabella; shook her gently to rouse her. She remained still.
Confused, I looked her up and down. Then I saw it: the scalpel sticking out of
her chest, surrounded by a growing Mandelbrot of blood. It was stark and red
against the clean white of her lab coat. The knife had struck her straight
through the heart, like a stake, so forceful in the fall that it had buried
itself almost halfway along its shaft. I fumbled, unsure whether to pull it out
or not. My mind went completely blank. I became aware of a terrible, animal
keening sound and, for a moment, thought the clone on the trolley was still
alive before I realized that the sound was coming from me.

I gathered Isabella up in my
arms, rocking her from side to side, telling her everything was going to be
okay. Only, in truth, I knew that was not the case. She was already dead, and,
in more ways than one, so was I.

There was no panic, no call to
the police. For some time I sat with Isabella, the world in tattered shreds
around me, the red ruin of the laboratory and the spilt blood a mockery of
everything her life had been. I couldn’t forgive her for what she’d done to me,
her strange, exotic form of vampirism. She had taken the very essence of what I
was and toyed with it, made it something alien, turned it into something it was
never intended to be. But all the same, I never wanted
this
. I smoothed
her hair back from her face, closed her eyelids with my fingertips.

After a while, sitting there in
stunned silence, the sounds of the medical equipment still loud and insistent
around me, my remorse began to give way to a strange kind of shocked relief.
There was a sense of peace, of closure. It was over. At least, this way, I had
my answer.

In a haze, still numb from the
shock, I took the corpse from the trolley, disconnecting the myriad pipes and
wires, and laid it beside her on the laboratory floor. Then, after cleaning
myself up as best I could, I fled the house, leaving the two of them together,
peaceful, as if sleeping. I hoped they were happy in their dreams.

Outside, night had fallen and
the world existed only in the impassionate glow of the streetlamps. I made my
way back to the car. Behind me, the house was silent, still.

I dropped my jacket onto the
passenger seat, running a hand over my face. I clambered into the driver’s
seat. My heart was pounding in my chest. I looked back at the house, thinking
of her there, in the lab, her eyes tired and glazed, her smile fixed and
unmoving. It was as if there had been only one inevitable outcome of our dark
and passionate affair, only one possible resolution, and there had been nothing
I could have done to stop it. Now, finally, it was over.

I knew the police wouldn’t come
looking for me; as far as their forensic tests would show, I was dead, lying on
the floor beside my lover, murdered in bizarre circumstances, in a strange
laboratory at the back of an old house. The clone and I had changed places,
adopted each other’s roles. Now, like him, I was new to the world. A world
without Isabella. Somehow I had to find my place in it, had to start again. I
had no idea where to even begin.

I turned over the car engine
and crawled slowly away from the curb. I could hear Isabella’s voice, echoing
around in my thoughts:

“Sometimes it just
feels like the whole world is conspiring against you, and you only wish you
could step back for a moment to take a breath.”

A moment later, I flashed the
car headlamps at a pedestrian making his lonely way home, and moved off into
the anonymity of the night.

Scenting the Dark

Mary Robinette Kowal

Lifting the stopper from the
vial to his nose, Penn inhaled slowly. Against the neutral backdrop of his
ship’s cleanroom, he picked out aromas of quince, elderberry, and bright
Martian soil that hinted of blood, with undercurrents of cinnamon and Zeta
Epsilon’s fragrantly sweet longgrass. He sighed, blowing the scents out again.
The perfume was still out of balance.

The boarding chime rang,
letting him know that Madison had returned. The round tones resonated off the
glass labware and sent vibrations across his scalp as it slowly, slowly faded.
God, it was gorgeous—picking up the temple bell when they were on Mosholu had
been one of his better choices. He’d eventually get the whole ship converted to
real things instead of all the virtual hoo-ha it came with. Well, maybe not the
whole ship; the skip drive had to exist in quantum state, but by God, the
controls at least were made out of real ebony and brass.

The intercom buzzed and
Madison’s honeyed voice came over the wires, “Hey there, Mr. Man. Got a
surprise for you.”

“A musk lion?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Come on
out.”

“I anticipate the pleasure of
your discovery.” He slid his left hand forward until he found the wire stand
that held his work trials. His fingers followed the trail of braided metal up
to the smooth glass vial. He slipped the stopper into it with practiced ease.

With one hand touching the
stainless steel work bench, Penn paced the distance to the cleanroom’s door.
Opening it brought a chaotic swirl of scents containing the dark mineral oils
that lubricated the doors, and the green plants grown to filter the air, and
dog and...something else. Something new. Penn lifted his head, scenting in
anticipation. Madison, that tease...she must have found a musk lion.

The boarding chime rang again.
Maybe more than one. Good.

“Cody?” He held his left hand
down while the tick-tick-tick of claws hurried to his side. Cody thrust her
damp nose into Penn’s hand, and licked once with her warm tongue before sliding
forward into working position.

Penn fondled his dog’s silky
ears, as she slipped past to bring the harness under his hand. The leather
handle was warm where it had lain against Cody’s back.

“Airlock.”

Without hesitation, Cody led
him down the hall, her shaggy tail beating against the back of Penn’s legs.
Truth be told, even if his blindness were repairable, he would be hard pressed
to give up his dog. She was a real lady. Not like a machine or electrodes in
his brain. Loyal and true. Hell’s bells. The fool dog was so excited to be working
that Penn didn’t even have the heart to let on that he knew the ship well
enough to find his way to the airlock without help.

The new scent was so rich.
Pungent with sexual intensity and spices that only flirted with the familiar.
Penn quickened his pace; his clients would pay top dollar for a perfume with
this. “Smell that, Cody? That’s why parfumiers like Lenox will never rise to
the sublime. Synthetics. Feh. Any Joe with a copier can make a fake.” That’s
why he did expeditions to new worlds before they were opened for colonization.
Hitting the market with a unique ingredient guaranteed that he maintained the
top position in his field.

Around the corner, something
heavy scraped against the metal deck of the ship. Penn had wanted oak floors,
but had to concede that they would not survive the heavy traffic through the
boarding area. The thing, probably a cage, held something that squealed with a
high rough voice. “Sounds like Madison had a successful expedition, eh, Cody?”

She whined in response.

The new aroma was definitely
coming from the boarding area. It was mixed with the more familiar smells of
Cody and the salty tang of Madison, but even with those distractions, the spicy
musk begged him to breathe deeper and absorb the aroma into his pores.

As they neared the boarding
area, Cody hesitated.

The boarding chime rang a third
time and with it came a dry hissing, like sand blown across the steel floor.
Cody flinched again. Then stopped.

“It’s all right, lady.”

She whined.

“Cody, forward!” He fumbled, searching
for her head with his free hand. Cody trembled and shifted. What had gotten
into her? He smoothed the fur on her ruff. “C’mon, lady. You’re on duty.”

The air in the corridor shifted
and brought a smell like blood and offal. Sweat suddenly beaded under his arms
and ran down his ribcage. “Madison?”

Somewhere in front of him, the
musk lion squealed once as if in answer to his call. Penn gripped Cody’s
harness tighter. “Find Madison.”

For a moment, Cody did not
move. Penn’s mouth dried; if she refused to work…. She huffed—not quite a
bark—and stepped forward. Hugging the wall, Cody led him down the corridor to
the boarding area.

The cage rattled and an animal
raged in a high chattering voice. From the cage came the heavy spice of alien
musk. Despite its intrigue, Penn found himself holding his breath.

Cody whined as they crossed the
threshold into the airlock but did not falter. The altar bell chimed their
departure.

On the ramp outside, warmth
bathed Penn telling him that the sun was out. The dissonance of what passed for
birdsong on this planet had stilled. Wind hissed in his ears, walling him in
with white noise. At the end of the ramp, Cody led him across a spongy, uneven
surface. The wind pushed him as if it were a bully on the playground, teasing the
blind kid.

Cody did not take him far from
the ship—only nine paces—before she came to a dead halt. “Madison?” The wind
tossed his aide’s name aside.

Under his grip, Cody hunkered
into a crouch. Stiff and beginning to shake, Penn knelt with her, reaching out
with his free hand. The ground was soft with thick short fronds like a living
shag carpet—the moss Madison had described when they’d first landed. He slid
his hand forward until it met cloth.

Startled, he pulled back for a
moment before reaching forward again. Quickly now, he recognized Madison’s arm
and slid down it to grip her hand. Warm and sticky with what must be blood, it
lay unresponsive in his grasp. “Hang in there. I’m here.”

Penn toggled his communicator
to call for emergency services. Flat tones confirmed his request, but he was so
far out from a settled world it might be weeks before his call was answered.