ASIM_issue_54 (20 page)

“That’s a little odd,” the New Yorker said. “In real life, how do you win by having nothing left?”

The Russian smiled. “What languages we speak, in addition to English? I speak Russian, French and Polish.”

“Some Punjabi for me,” the Englishman said. “From my Army days.”

“Spanish,” said the Texan.

“German,” said the New Yorker.

“German chocolate cake?” the steward asked.

“I’m stuffed like a pig,” the Texan said. “That steak with chopped liver … And … oh yes. What do all these languages have in common?”

“They are Indo-European languages,” the Englishman said. “Originating most probably in the steppes north of the Caspian Sea, in your own country.”

“Have you ever been there?” the Russian said.

“Peaches in Chartreuse Jelly?” the steward asked.

The Texan shook his head, looking very much like a horse shooing away a very annoying fly. “Why does he keep butting in? Can’t hardly keep a conversation going with all these interruptions. What was that last thing? Right! No, I have never been in your country.”

“Believe me, sir,” the Russian continued, “nothing and nobody there, now.”

“Interesting point,” the New Yorker said.

“And what does this have to do with Mr. Wells?”

“You start the game of
Durak
by attacking with ace or trump?” The Russian asked.

“No,” the New Yorker said. “Your opponent would then be able to use it against you later in the game. As in—”

“The Sepoys had our rifles when they rebelled,” the Englishman said.

“And Washington was British-trained,” the New Yorker said. “And the Japanese went from junks to battleships in forty years after Mr. Perry’s visit.”

“We have excellent Chocolate and Vanilla Eclairs,” the steward said.

“They have excellent battleships in Japanese Navy,” the Russian said. “I saw. At Tsushima.” He shook his head. “Pacific not good place to be in lifeboat. Lifeboat not good place to be. Ever.”

“So it’s unlikely that Martians would attack with over-advanced weaponry,” the Englishman said. “Heat rays or some such.”

“Not if they are smart,” the New Yorker said. “Now, if you take Mr. Stoker’s book …”

“Martian vampires!” the Englishman exclaimed. “The unearthly undead!”

“I’m glad
someone
is making sense out of this,” the Texan said. “Would you mind explaining?”

“Let us discard, shall we say, the fanciful idea that one who is bit becomes a vampire,” the Englishman said. “Let us hold on to the long life span and the unusual dietary requirements. And let us consider the vampire’s curious immunity to the mirror and daguerreotype. We have, then, a race of invisible—or simply quite small—beings, able to project their appearance and voice directly into our mind by mesmeric power, and levitate by some other, scientific means. They could have walked among us since before the time of Vlad Tepes. Since before Gilgamesh, for that matter. And we’d be none the wiser.”

“Ice Cream?” the steward said. “French vanilla …”

“Cold make sick, like quinsy or consumption,” the Russian said, rubbing his throat. “Mars like Siberian tundra: cold, empty, bad weather. Good place to run away from. I read about Jose de Acosta, he think Indians ran away to America from Siberia. Nothing left on tundra. Nothing left on Mars.”

“I guess this means one of us could be a Martian vampire,” the Texan said. “Ain’t that right, boy?” he added, waving to the steward.

“White Star Line would never,” the steward said, “allow a person of dubious character on board one of its ships.” Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he backed away from the table.

“Easy to find out,” the New Yorker said. He produced a polished cigarette case. “Here I am,” he said, shifting to sit near the Russian, “and here you are. Two reflections. Now you, gentlemen,” he handed the case to the Texan.

“And here we are, both of us,” the Texan said, leaning toward the Englishman. “Waiter! Come here, boy. Your turn.”

“In a moment, sir,” the steward said from the doorway.

“Come back here. I want to see your mug in the mirror,” the Texan called. “Where you going, boy?”

“A most important matter, sir,” the steward said. “I must fetch more ice.” He hurried away.

“There’s still a block of it on the table,” the New Yorker said. “What’s he gonna fetch, an iceberg?”

The Mad Scientist’s Beautiful Daughter

…Nicole M Taylor

The man in the black coat came on a Wednesday. On Wednesdays, Orla’s papa worked in the lab until five o’clock, when he took a walk with her around the grey lake. The man in the black coat knocked on the door at 4:37. Orla knew that he would be disruptive and did not want to answer the door but her father smiled at her and urged her forward.

The man in the black coat was very pale. He had brown hair and it was sticking to his forehead in little raggedy tendrils even though the day was temperate and there had been no rain. Orla wondered if he was sickly. If he was sickly then he definitely couldn’t come in. Papa had a very delicate constitution and he was prone to infections.

“Are you ill?” she asked. The man in the black coat looked taken aback and he didn’t say any-thing for a moment. Orla tapped her fingernails on the doorframe.

“Uh … no …” he stammered, “I haven’t slept of late, but it’s nothing … nothing …”

“Why are you here?” Orla said.

“Orla!” her papa chided from the next room. “There’s no need to be rude!”

“I’m being curt, Papa,” Orla called back.

“It is perilously close, my darling,” her father replied, but Orla could tell from the tenor of his voice that he had gone back to his book and had likely lost all interest in the exchange.

“I need to speak to the old man.”

Orla frowned, because that was a name for her papa that the villagers had and she did not like it. They should be grateful. Papa was famous and he was the only interesting, the only good thing about their miserable little hamlet.

“He does not do commissioned work any longer,” Orla told the man. This was not entirely true, but she had brought the idea up to Papa many times. Her father was a genius and they had plenty of money and Orla had long thought that he should be free to pursue his own interests. “Orla, my dear, I do not do it for the money,” was all he had said.

“Please,” said the man at the door. One hand clung whitely to the frame, it looked as though he might break apart the wood with his fingers.

“Let the boy in, Orla,” said Papa from the next room. Orla pursed her lips and reluctantly stepped back from the doorway.

“Thank you.” He reached out, as if to grasp her hand gratefully, but Orla balled her hands into fists and tucked them deep in her apron’s pockets. Visits always overtired Papa, she knew that he would sleep late the next morning and no doubt be grumpy all the rest of the day. Thursdays were shopping days, too, which always added a certain amount of stress to the household.

The man in the black coat closed the study door behind him and Orla went upstairs to the kitchen. She had an idea that she might have a cup of chamomile before Parse started on dinner.

Orla’s father had made Parse for her when she was six and three quarters. He cooked meals for her and Papa, he braided her hair the way she liked it and darned up her dresses when she got rips in them. He even tucked her in at night before going down into the lab and helping Papa (this was when Papa was younger and worked long into the night). Parse didn’t speak and sometimes his movements were clumsy and uncertain. Orla’s papa said this was because he was a first draft and he had perfected others like him since. But Orla always understood Parse and she did not want a better version of him.

Parse was waiting in the faded yellow kitchen, standing watchfully over a small kettle that was about to boil. Orla smiled at him and sat down at the table.

* * *

Thursday was shopping day and Orla did not want to go. But there was nothing in the way of jam in the pantry and she knew that her father had a fondness for jam with his toast in the afternoon. She wished sometimes that she could take Parse with her. That way she would know that she had one friend at least. But Papa quite wisely had said that that was not allowed. Orla herself had lived so long with Parse that she could not even remember a time when his, admittedly unusual, face seemed anything other than friendly and comforting. But the villagers were not like Orla.

On shopping days, she woke up early to wash her hair specially. It was very long; wet, it swept the backs of her thighs. Parse brushed it patiently until it was dry and straight as pins. He braided it for her and her plait skewed uncertainly to the right, but Parse had very soft, tentative hands. This was the last part of shopping day that Orla enjoyed.

Orla did not like children. They were noisy, unpredictable and remorseless, like loose firecrackers with sticky little hands. The children in the village seemed to feel similarly about Orla. Their mothers called them in as she passed, but she could see their pert little faces in the windows, eyes empty of anything except curiosity.

“Go on by, missus,” one of those sour-faced mothers would say, standing in the doorway with wet stains on her apron, her face reddened from long hours in a close kitchen. As if Orla would stop, as if she would wish to stay even one moment longer with any of them.

When she was much younger, Orla had a cautious fondness for the shopkeeper’s wife. She did not jeer or snipe at her like the other women and she was tall and pale with lips so red they were nearly purple. She reminded Orla of her own mother and the two of them had a mutual regard for one another. At least until one day when the shopkeeper’s wife leaned helpfully over a barrel of white sugar and the cold iron nail she wore around her neck slipped from her collar. It hung in between them like an accusing question mark.

“Just superstition,” she said, with a bright smile on her purple lips and not in her eyes. Orla said nothing to her. She was nine years old, but she knew what cold iron was for. It kept the evil things out. The shopkeeper’s wife stopped making small talk with Orla after that, though she occasionally looked at the girl with something akin to sympathy. But Orla could still see the faint, curled outline of the metal she wore close to her heart.

The shopkeeper’s son Derek, on the other hand, had never even pretended to be nice. Today he was playing a particularly one-sided game that was a favorite of his. Orla would ask for something, a pound of butter or a loaf of rye bread, and Derek would wrap it up tenderly as a baby in swaddling clothes and then unceremoniously drop it to the floor. Sometimes he would pretend it had been an accident, but most of the time, he would just smile meanly at her as though daring her to object. Orla never did, but only knelt down and collected her parcel.

They both heard the heavy, muffled cracking when he dropped the strawberry jam. Orla stared at the brown package at her feet.

“Replace that,” she said. She did not look at him, but she could imagine the delighted smile spreading across his face.

“Sorry missus, ‘fraid you’ve paid for just the one,” he said sweetly.

“It’s broken,” Orla pointed out. One whole corner of the package was heavy and red. It was getting on the floor, it would stain if he didn’t clean it up soon.

Derek shrugged. He put his hands on the counter between them and leaned heavily towards her. He smiled again, an awful sort of smile. A little rabbit-thought skittered wild across Orla’s mind. There was a long-handled spade on the wall, just behind Derek. It wouldn’t take very much force at all, just one good swing and … She wondered if it would look anything like seeping, spreading strawberry jam?

Orla reached into the pocket of her sweater and brought out her father’s ancient leather wallet once again.

* * *

Back in her gold-colored kitchen, Parse helped Orla unpack the shopping bag. As she pushed the new, unmarred jar of strawberry jam to the back of the ice box, she heard voices coming from the long hallway. Her father’s warm rumble and the uneasy staccato of the man in the black coat. She did not know that he was in today and the thought of it prickled at the back her scalp. People could not be coming and going at all hours. Right now, this very moment, Papa was supposed to be giving Parse his weekly check-up. Orla looked at Parse, cradling the bread to him on the way to the cupboard. Had he even seen Papa at all today?

Orla strayed far as she dared towards the open doorway. She couldn’t see anyone, but she could hear her father clearly.

“—happy to do it,” he was saying. The man breathed out a great, rushing sigh as though he had just been relieved of some impossible burden.

“You have no idea how long—”

Papa interrupted him. “I have always appreciated a man with vision,” he said.

“Vision,” the man in black echoed as though he were hearing the word for the very first time.

At three o’clock, Orla brought her father toast and black coffee, as she always did. He was bent over his long table in the study, drawing something with small, intimate pen scratches. When Orla interrupted him he gave her a distracted kiss on the cheek and had her set the coffee down at the end of the table. It was still there at five o’clock when she came back in preparation for their walk around the lake. The toast was untouched as well. Orla poked at it with her finger and found the bread soaked through.