The Radio Magician and Other Stories (14 page)

“Had you seen a planet on that coordinate earlier?” he asked. Dustin shook his head. At Dustin’s desk, two women, one in a bathrobe, and the other in a nice pantsuit, whispered vehemently back and forth about the image. “We’ll need his hard drive. It could be a fake,” Pantsuit said. “I don’t see how,” replied Bathrobe.

A man in uniform, but definitely not a policeman, carefully rolled Dustin’s Peek-a-boo into a plastic bag that zipped closed when the unit plopped to the bottom.

From the hallway, Mom’s voice said, “He’s always been a determined boy.”

Dad said, “So, you think he really found something, do you?” His tone was skeptical.

Someone in the hallway said, “He’ll be famous.”

“Look at this,” said Bathrobe. She moved the cursor to the menu bar at the top of the screen. A few clicks later, the image reoriented itself. Now the gray and yellow texture moved to the top and became sky. Dustin blinked, then blinked again. What had seemed abstract before suddenly made sense. “Is that . . .” he said, and swallowed. “Is that a building?”

Pantsuit pointed to what had been a red blob before, “Yes, and that looks like a tree to me. . .” she bent close to the screen, “. . . with a park bench under it. A yellow one with brown arm rests.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Bathrobe, in a voice that was clear she did.

The older man sitting on the bed with Dustin said to himself, “It’s such a big universe. What are the odds a Peek-a-boo would appear close enough to a planet’s surface, oriented just the right way, to take a picture of a park bench?”

Bathrobe said, “A park bench 380 million light years from Earth.”

Dustin lay in his bed. The clouds had cleared, and early dawn lightened the sky enough through his window to dissolve the stars and show the blank area on his desk where his computer had sat earlier that night. Now, though, only a clean square outlined by a fine dust film showed that anything had been there at all.

“We’ll replace this computer,” Bathrobe had said as she left with the CPU. Pantsuit added, “And a new Peek-a-boo, even better than your old one. Later today, there will be a news conference.”

The older man patted Dustin on the head as he left. “There will be a lot of news conferences, I’d say, now that you showed us where to look.”

After all the bustle, after the doors slammed below and the cars departed, Dustin finally climbed into bed, but he couldn’t sleep. For the longest time he stared out the window, his sheets pulled to his chin, hands locked behind his head. A few days ago, the moon had preceded Mars to the horizon, but now the red planet set first, while the moon followed, dragging Pleiades like star babies close behind. He thought about the stars passing by his window as if they were friends: Hamal, of course, and Menkar, and the sprinkling of tau stars, omi Tau, xi Tau and f Tau, then Aldebaran and Algol, and Betelgeuse, who faded last in the lightening sky. They all seemed so comforting that he didn’t notice at first that the house had changed. For the longest time he tried to place the difference. Not just the missing computer. Not just the strangeness of the night’s events. Something else.

He gasped in surprise, then silenced his breathing so he could hear. Below him, in his parent’s room, he heard voices: his mom and dad, talking. The conversation rose and fell. It had been going on since they’d left his room. Once, he could swear, he heard laughter. Long after the morning sky had brightened to blue and the maple tree cast its shadow on the fence and their neighbor’s house, Dustin listened, and not once, that morning, did his parents quit talking. Not even when they moved into the kitchen. Not even when they began fixing breakfast. Their voices broke the long silence, and Dustin knew he wasn’t alone in the house.

He wasn’t alone, and it was time to eat.

TINY VOICES

M
ore than the thirty feet and a wall separated the two women.

Stella sipped breaths, her sheet pulled under her chin, eyes closed tight, but she saw the room from a dozen vantage points: from the television’s self-focusing eye, the coffee pot’s proximity control, the light switch’s finger pad, the medical sensor’s finely tuned perception field that reached not just to her, tracing each labored heart beat and marking the sluggish progress of her blood through her body, but also picking up a fly’s tiny buzz near the ceiling fixture and a beetle crawling along the baseboard under the bed. She saw herself lying beneath the covers, old, old, old, as old as crumbling epitaphs, as old as weathered wood, her face a shrunken fruit barely making a dent in the pillow. I.V. lines dangled from her arm. She pitied herself as if from afar, and it was all she could do to keep from weeping. In fact, when she looked closely, she could tell she was weeping shiny glinting tear tracks from the corners of her eyes to her ears. It didn’t seem fair, so close to death that she could sense so much. With an electron’s nimbleness, she switched her attention from device to device. I can’t be dying, she thought; I don’t want to.

Stella saw Corey too, sitting at her desk beyond the door in the receiving room, talking to her pencil.

“It’s just a memo,” Corey said. “Thirty or forty words, no more. I won’t even press hard.” If Stella’s traveling senses could have reached Corey’s inner ear, she would have heard the pencil’s tinny voice in reply. “I’m only good for five thousand words, and that’s if you write small ones, but you like ‘tremulous’ and ‘serendipity.’ Please, write with someone else.”

Corey put the pencil on her desk. It was an ordinary yellow pencil with number two lead, but with the addition of a sentient chip. Everything had a sentient chip. Her chair reminded her occasionally that she was gaining weight, and her desk chatted amiably about waxy buildup and the loose paperclips in the bottom drawer, just as her car talked about traffic, and her blouse reported dirt and perspiration. Everything talked, but her pencil was difficult. It talked of death.

“My doctor needs to know what I want to do,” Corey said. “If I don’t write it down, he won’t know.” She placed a fingertip on the pencil’s pointed end and another on the pink eraser, holding it above the blank paper. “You need to do your job. This is important. You’re just a pencil.” She thought about the tests she’d already taken, and how her doctor had blanched when he told her, “You’re pregnant.”

“I haven’t ordered a baby,” she had said, her hands pressing the sides of the papery robe to the examination table.

“No,” the doctor said, “
You
are pregnant. Your body is.”

He’d left the room after giving her a handful of brochures with fifty-year-old copyright dates and illustrations of third-world women in front of mud huts.

She had to write him a note, but she didn’t know what to say. Nothing on her small and tidy desk helped. A clock. A leather-edged desk pad. A picture of her mom leaning against a tree the year before she’d fallen sick and died. If Corey stretched her arms, she could wrap her hands around both of the desk’s edges lengthwise. A hat rack stood near the door next to an uncomfortable chair. The walls were a clean, smooth beige and had a wiped-down shininess to them that made her think of dentist offices.

The pencil moaned. “My life is measured in words.”

In the other room, Stella cleared her throat, and Stella heard it in the telephone and the stereo and the sink and every other voice-activated device. She was wired in everywhere, as fast as a thought, dexterous and lively in her mind, not old and declining. With effort, she concentrated on her throat, swallowing hard, controlling the muscles and making sure that it was clear when she was done. The nurse told her that she had to be careful with her swallowing. A careless moment could mean choking to death, not that being careful would prevent the inevitable.

“Corey,” she croaked, but it was too soft a sound. She imagined it didn’t even reach the end of her bed.

In the other room, Corey said to her pencil, “I’m not talking to you anymore,” and she wrote a note furiously.

“Corey,” Stella said, louder this time. Her lungs wheezed shut like wet tissues. Stella would have pushed the call button, but she couldn’t find it. She couldn’t feel her fingers well, and it was possible that she was holding the button without knowing. Disgusted at her faltering body, Stella slid into the television, upped the volume and boomed, “Corey, dear!”

Corey put the pencil down, read her note, then threw it in the trash can, a wadded ball. “Thank you,” said the trash can’s voice in her ear. “This is a type one recyclable.”

“Coming.” Corey’s chair creaked without comment when she stood. Then, as if on cue, the outer door opened and Harlow walked in, his jacket hanging on one arm, his thick blonde hair tousled across his forehead in a nonchalant fashion that said, “I’m carefree; can’t you be too?”

In a blink, Corey pictured him in a different light, his clothes carefully draped over the top of a chair under his neatly folded jacked, his face close to hers, breathing fast but delicious and warm as roast beef. What she noticed most in the memory, though, was his hair with its deliberate indifference, the same as it looked now.

“How’s the old Stella-witch today?” he said, with a long, slow, polished smile as he walked by.

Corey started after him, then flinched. Had she thrown away the note? A glance assured her it was in the trash.

Stella saw the flinch from three angles. A quick dip into the trash can’s sentience didn’t help. No visuals. Paper, the sensor told her. Low rag content.

Reluctantly, Stella pulled herself back into her head. Harlow’s hand rested on her arm. He gave it a tiny squeeze, then said too loudly, “Hi, Stella. It’s me, Harlow, your nephew.”

She tried to clear her throat again. No luck. Phlegm, solid as a hockey puck, clogged it. “I know who you are,” she bellowed from the television.

“Jeeze!” Harlow jumped. “I hate it when you do that.”

Stella used the mental connection to turn the volume down. “I’m old, not ignorant.” She tried to focus on him, but her eyelids hurt to stay open, and she teared easily. He was a tall, dark blur against the ceiling lights. Switching to the television made him easier to see—of all the devices in the room, it had the best optics—but his back was to that point of view. Corey stood on the other side of the bed, though, and her face was clear, not looking at Stella. Her head was down, studying Harlow from beneath her long lashes.

“You’re not that old, Stella. The doctor just yesterday told me how well you were doing.” He winked at Corey. “We’ll have you dancing again in a week.”

Corey smiled back, but Harlow had already looked away. She watched his hand on Stella’s arm. The night they’d been together had been so vivid. His hand had toyed with the top button on her blouse for the longest time, not unbuttoning it, but not going away either.

Harlow sighed, somewhere between annoyed and bored. Until two months ago, he’d always lingered longer at Corey’s desk then he did at Stella’s bedside. But that was two months ago. Corey could almost see him checking the time. She searched for something to say. “Stella’s improved her connections. A tech was in here this morning. He told me that’s he’s never hooked up so many devices into one interface, but Stella doesn’t move much, so there isn’t a problem with range and interference like there would be for you or me.”

“Really?” Harlow crossed his arms. “Expensive, I’ll bet.”

“I don’t know. I suppose.” The interface relay, a flat box an inch thick and six inches on each side, hung on the wall directly behind Stella’s head.

“I like to keep the seat of my consciousness movable,” Stella said from the small refrigerator on the counter. “What’s really expensive is the internal gear. Sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. The whole shooting match.”

Harlow glanced around the room. “What have you got in here with a sense of taste?”

“Not me. That’s for sure. Coffee maker. Microwave. I’ve got a stirring ladle at the house that could probably tell me a bunch. Can’t access it from here, though.” Stella laughed from the refrigerator’s speaker, which normally only said things like, “The milk has gone bad,” or “There’s a special on broccoli this week.”

Corey wanted to move to Harlow’s side of the bed. Maybe if she got close enough to him, he would have to acknowledge her. He’d been so distant lately, as if she was someone he’d never met before. Only his hand on Stella’s arm seemed vulnerable, and even that gesture looked perfunctory. His jacket hid his other hand, and he held his arms close to his side. He was self-contained. Locked in.

Harlow shrugged. “Everybody has to have a hobby, I suppose. Whatever makes you happy, Aunt Stella. Don’t know if I could stand the extra information. Bad enough that doorknobs and sidewalks talk.”

Corey said, “You have a business interface, don’t you?”

“Of course, business. Phone calls. That’s it. I block the rest.” He moved his jacket to his shoulder. “Everybody who wants to stay sane does that. Too much noise otherwise. Silly ads and chatty appliances.”

“I suppose,” Corey said. “I hadn’t thought about it that way before.”

He smiled at her again, like he had when he’d passed her desk, all teeth and glittering eyes like a light flicking on, then it was gone. “Your message said there were more papers to sign. I should get to them.”

“And more for tomorrow too. Today’s are on my desk.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m just dying here,” said Stella from the light switch.

Corey looked down at her guiltily. Stella’s arms seemed no more substantial than flower stems, and dark mottles covered the parchment-thin skin.

“Are you comfortable, ma’am? Can I get you some water?” She moved the pillow under Stella’s head to give her a better angle.

The old woman’s eyes peeked from between the eyelids. A tip of tongue moistened her lips. Corey leaned close. “Yes, dear. That would be nice,” Stella whispered. Corey smiled. Stella always called her dear or deary, terms of endearment Corey had never heard from anyone else. They were archaic, like Stella.

Water poured from the faucet before she reached it. “Forty-two degrees and pure as a spring,” said the sink’s voice in Corey’s head. Beside the sink sat the microwave, and beside that the coffee maker. Four white cabinets containing medical supplies filled the rest of the space to the counter’s end. She could smell the ointment she rubbed into Stella’s elbows and knees. The jar’s lid was loose, so she tightened it. When she returned to the bedside, Stella appeared to have gone asleep, her face tilted to the side, her breath raspy and dry. Corey reached to touch Stella’s shoulder.

“I’m still with you,” said the microwave. “Just wandering around the room. I love the new interface, deary.”

Stella turned on the pillow, and when the straw touched her lips, she drank gingerly. “Oh, that’s better,” she murmured.

The old woman swallowed a couple more times as if it hurt. “Your young man is gone,” she said.

“My young man?” Corey’s fingers rested on the bed’s cool, aluminum side rail. “Oh, Harlow!”

The outer room was empty. On her desk, the papers were signed. In the trash can, next to her wadded note, lay a pen. The trash can, with a hurt tone, said in her ear, “This is a mixed-composition non-recyclable item. It should be disposed of properly.”

Corey straightened the papers before bending down to retrieve the pen.

“Thank goodness,” the pen said when she picked it up. “I’m properly functioning and three-quarters full.”

It glistened in her hand, an ordinary black and gray business-person’s pen. “So, why’d he throw you away?” The pen’s button depressed smoothly under her thumb, revealing the ball point with an authoritative click.

“I skip sometimes,” it said, sulkily. “It’s a manufacturing flaw. Not my fault.”

“Did you tell him?” She clicked the pen closed and set it on the desk next to her pencil.

“He never ever listens. He misspells all the time, you know. Will he make a correction? Nope. I might as well be mute.”

“I’ll bet he’s hell on pencils too,” said the pencil.

“Oh, yes. He chews them when he’s thinking.”

“The bastard.”

Corey said, “How old are you?”

“My battery expires in six months, but I wanted to go down writing.”

“Do you mind if I use you to compose a note? My pencil is reluctant.” She opened a desk drawer for a piece of paper.

The pencil barked, “Not reluctant! I’m
solar
powered. No expiration date, if she would just quit using me!”

“Not at all. I’m here to serve. Umm, I do skip occasionally. Is this to be a final draft?”

“Just a note.” Corey held the pen next to her ear, clicked it open then closed a few times. The paper’s blankness seemed a mile wide. What could she write on it? What could she tell the doctor? He’d seemed as confused as she was at first, and apologetic. “Ovulation has been blocked for you. Technically, I don’t know how it could happen.” She had closed her eyes on the examination table, ticking off the symptoms that had brought her in: light-headedness, tender breasts, constipation and fatigue.

“Are you sure it isn’t a vitamin deficiency?” she had said.

He shuffled through screens on his clipboard. “No, you’re eight weeks along, give or take a couple days. There’s a heartbeat. I’d have to do field work in back-country Africa for an opportunity like this. It’s fascinating.”

Then he talked to her about abortion. “If we had caught it earlier,” he said, “we could consider a fetal extraction and a normal laboratory gestation. But . . . eight weeks.” He shrugged and told her to take a day or two to choose the best date to come in.

Corey twirled the pen from finger to finger. Her other hand rested on her belly. It was hard to imagine a second heartbeat inside her. The idea was so . . . retro. The only picture she could associate with it was of a frontier woman sitting on the seat of a covered wagon, her hands loose on the reins, a belly full of baby resting on her legs. She thought about talking to Harlow. “By the way,” she might say, “you know how sometimes the most unlikely things can happen?”