The Radio Magician and Other Stories (30 page)

“ThreeAndrea?” he said. Slowly, far more slowly then he ever remembered, his systems came to life.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“How . . . ?” His instruments showed power flowing through his outstretched arm. Finally a visual glowed. ThreeAndrea’s hand joined to his, sending electricity into him. His power storage units were empty. “How long has it been? My clock isn’t functioning.” Several submechanisms weren’t responding either. The thruster seemed to be cut off, and although he could sense the arm still stored into his side, it wouldn’t respond to a diagnostic.

ThreeAndrea said, “Almost thirty thousand years for me. Somewhat less for you.” Her voice was as he remembered it, different from his own, lighter. She spaced her words irregularly. He’d always wondered if it was an error in her programming, or if she did it on purpose to be unique. She continued, “You anchored into an inactive sector, or it broke soon after you arrived. There was no way for you to recharge.”

“I thought you were dead. You didn’t move.”

For seconds she didn’t reply. He continued scanning himself. No power. No propulsion. No way to move his arms. He couldn’t access his grid to see what new damage there might be.

Then she said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

He had no answer for that. “How much time do we have?”

“I haven’t been repairing, just storing. Four minutes between the two of us. I can’t move you, though. The only way for you to stay active is hooked to me.”

“Well, then don’t let go.” He could feel the power coming from her, and it tingled oddly. His system had to reroute it, and it wasn’t exactly the same as he was used to, as if the electricity was flavored by passing through her. It wasn’t unpleasant.

“I won’t. Have you looked down?”

If he could have shook his head, he would have. He realized that since the Maker’s planet had stopped responding, he’d spent every waking period looking up, examining the grid, peering at the diminished sun beyond.

“I don’t have the power to,” he said.

“Look through mine,” she said, and she clicked open relays that allowed him access to her scanner.

The field that was the universe was absolutely blank. An empty distance, devoid of radiation and light; nothing was out there. “Where are the stars?” Marvell said.

“They’re gone.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“Then this is the last?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“Walt Whitman would be sad,” Marvell said. “He wrote, ‘I wandered off by myself, in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, looked up in perfect silence at the stars.’”

“He got the silence right,” said ThreeAndrea.

Marvell tried to access his clock. It still wasn’t working. “How much more time?”

“Not long.”

“What’s the condition of your grid? Will we wake again?”

Marvell sensed her withdrawing as she consulted her system.

“We might, but it’s all grown so old.”

He knew she meant the grid, the sun and them. Everything.

“Are you afraid?” Marvell asked. He studied the blankness below them. It was totally featureless, without depth or meaning. All the stars that once shone gone at once, finally. The long play ended.

“Not now. It’s just sleep mode,” ThreeAndrea said.

“I can feel your hand, you know,” Marvell said. His sensors recorded the pressure of her manipulators against his own. Sensitive to the last, his fingers caressed the metal texture, brittle in the deep, deep cold.

“Yes, I hoped you could.”

::::: blink :::::

ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES

R
omulus stood under an elm in the moon-washed shadow of the long, green sward between Gray Mountain Golf Course’s ninth fairway and the Gray Mountain Country Club, listening to the tinny dance music of Pinehurst High’s prom. He pried chunks of bark off the tree absently with his fingernail, but his focus was on the building, pink light leaking from the windows, a hundred shiny windshields catching the moon in the parking lot beyond, and the sad-leafed whisper of the wind. Shadows passed between the light and the windows, couples dancing, heads close together, gliding by during the slow song, and Romulus wondered which one was Fay with her date, what’s-his-name, the troll.

He looked through the leaves at the moon, three days short of being full, and he scuffed the ground in disgust. Since September, when Student Senate scheduled the dance, he’d known. All the full moons were marked on his day-planner, mixed in with deadlines for college applications, baccalaureate, Senior Academic Awards night and graduation. There it was, a perfectly circular moon on the Tuesday after prom, and he’d known he would be standing outside, skin a little itchy, jaw aching, watching the dance.

When Romulus was a freshman, Dad told him it was regressive genetics catching up. They’d sat in his bedroom, Romulus’ wildlife posters covering the walls, Dad, a little embarrassed, telling him the facts of life.

“You’re getting to that age, son.” Dad pressed his hands on the tops of his knees and locked his elbows straight, clearly uncomfortable.

“I know, Dad.” Romulus scooted farther away on the bed. Dad’s weight pressed the mattress down, and no matter where Romulus sat, he felt like he was an inch away from tumbling into him. And Romulus
did
know. He’d known for years, listening to his parents talking late at night, marking their calendars, Dad slipping out at dusk the nights of a full moon. What kid wouldn’t know?

“You’re going to start noticing girls more. You’re a sensitive boy,” Dad said.

Romulus blushed. It was true, he did. They’d walk by him in the halls, their backpacks hanging off one shoulder, intent on conversations with each other, and he’d catch himself staring at the almost invisible hair on a naked wrist, the curve of muscle in a neck. But most of all, it was their smell. For the longest time he hadn’t known what it was. Once a month, or so, depending on the girl, he’d catch a stray whiff beneath the shampoo and perfume and hair spray, and his muscles would tense. He hoped to god Dad wasn’t going to say anything about that. That would be too much. He’d rather jump out the window than listen to Dad fumble his way through an explanation of the smell.

Instead, Dad launched into an oblique reference to evolution and the origin of the species. “The genes mixed, son. I know what they told you in your science classes about where man came from, but they don’t know the half of it, the magical half.”

Romulus let out a relieved sigh. Dad wasn’t going to talk about girls after all. Instead he talked about elves and harpies, goblins, giants and humans. “The dominant breed won out and all were assimilated. Everyone’s human, more or less, but sometimes a regressive gene rises to the surface. Do you know what I’m trying to say?” He put his hand on Romulus’s knee. “You’re a special kid. There are others like you, some just like you, some from the other races, a little bit of old ancestry, the old mythologies, in everyone, more or less.”

“Sure, Dad. Thanks for clearing this all up for me. I’ve got to do my homework now. Okay?”

“Oh, good.” Dad let out a noisy sigh, like he’d just set down a great weight. “So you know why things are the way they are?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

Then Dad left. Romulus didn’t do his homework, but lay in bed instead, his hands clasped behind his head, staring at the ceiling, thinking about smells.

So he started paying attention to the lunar calendar his freshman year, and as time wore on he grew a few inches, filled out in the chest, found he needed to shave, and the week of the full moon he didn’t schedule anything at night. Was Dad right? he wondered. Was
everyone
descended from mythological creatures? Sometimes he wandered the halls during passing period, or he sat in class and tried to figure where the other students came from. Was the cheerleader part elf? Was the junior class president’s great, great, great, great (and so on) grandmother a gorgon? She was frightening enough, and there was a snakiness to her hair when she stood in the wind. He sniffed her, but she smelled purely human. He’d never identified anyone’s deep ancestry until he smelled the troll in the boy who liked Fay, and that was a pure scary fluke. They’d bumped in the hall. The troll shoved him off, and in the shove Romulus had smelled him. A line of associations clicked—an instinctive recognition—but so strong that for a second the boy’s hands were twisted claws, and his incisors hung from his mouth like stout tusks.

Romulus hadn’t known whether to run or snarl. And what bad luck! Of all the boys in the school, the troll had to ask Fay to prom.

It wasn’t his fault the stupid Student Senate decided this date for the dance. He leaned against the tree. Fay hadn’t understood, really, when he told her he couldn’t go to the prom. She’d smiled. Was sweet about it. Maybe she even believed him when he stammered his excuses. So she made the date with the troll. Romulus squeezed his eyes shut in frustration. The music changed to a faster beat. Shadows bounced against the window. A couple boys slipped out the doors and walked to their truck, avoiding the security cop in the parking lot. Even from a hundred yards away, Romulus smelled the beer. They only stayed in the truck for a few minutes, then headed back to the dance.

Romulus left the lawn and walked the neighborhoods, choosing streets randomly. He hid from cars—it was long past curfew, and he didn’t want to explain to a policeman what he was doing. Sometimes a dog chained in a back yard caught wind of him and howled. He didn’t howl back, didn’t even growl, but he wished one would break free. They could run the blocks together, or they could stand face to face, teeth showing in the moon. “This is mine,” their postures would say. Maybe the dog would leap, go for his throat. Romulus closed his eyes and felt the night air on his cheek, the stoney road beneath his shoes. Or maybe
he
would leap and the dog’s throat would be in
his
teeth. He could almost feel the pulse in his mouth.

It seemed for hours that he walked, often with his eyes closed, not paying attention to where he was, trusting his nose to lead him. When a car turned the corner ahead of him, and he dove into a bush, he was surprised to find he was directly across the street from Fay’s house. The car parked. It was the troll’s convertible, top down, looking low, black and ominous in the moonlight. Fay and the troll walked to the porch.

“I had a nice time,” she said, her hands in his between them.

“Me too.” The troll wore a letter jacket over his tux. Even from the bushes across the street, Romulus could see the multiple brass bars glistening in the porch light showing how many times he’d lettered: football, wrestling and track. A thick-necked, thick-wristed, thick-headed wunderkind with perfect balance and the fast twitch muscles of a cheetah. A vague suggestion of Harrison Ford in his chin and smile. A careless black lock of hair that fell across his forehead in an unkempt way that some girls found charming.

Romulus was loath to think Fay could fall for this, but as the two talked, their faces came closer and closer together like an inevitable collision, two lambent planets closing on each other in the night sky, until they were kissing, and Romulus turned away, a bitter tear in each eye.

Later, after Fay went into her house and the troll drove away, Romulus walked back to Gray Mountain Country Club. Other than empty beer cans and broken glass in the parking lot, nothing remained of the prom. He wandered onto the golf course, fell asleep on the third green, and when he woke in the morning, stiff from tiredness and the cold, he saw his own dew-drawn silhouette in the grass.

In the hallways that Monday, Romulus moved listlessly from subject to subject, avoiding Fay until finally he ran into her between Calculus and Mythology, a class they shared.

They talked outside the door. “Did you do your homework?” she asked.

He nodded. They were supposed write a report on a character from Camelot. He’d chosen Uther Pendragon. As always, he found himself staring. Her complexion fascinated him, absolutely exquisite, like polished silk, pale and smooth, dark-blue eyes, a hint of copper in her blonde hair. He thought about a willow wand swaying on a river bank. Looking at her was like listening to water dance over rounded rocks, all foam and bubbles and deep, still pools.

Fay glanced into his eyes, then looked away. “I don’t think teachers should be allowed to make assignments on prom weekend.”

“You didn’t get yours done?” His palms sweated just talking to her.

Fay shook her head.

“You can have mine. I’ve got an A in there already without it.”

Fay smiled. “Really? You’d do that?”

Embarrassed, Romulus put his head down. “It’s no big deal.”

She put her hand on his arm. “That’s the nicest thing I think anyone’s ever offered to do for me, but I better face the music on my own.” She stood on her tiptoes, kissed him on the cheek, then slipped around the doorway into the room.

Students streamed past him, intent on beating the tardy bell, but Romulus didn’t move. Slowly, he brought his hand up to his face and brushed his fingertips where she’d kissed him.

During class, Romulus barely listened. He focused instead on Fay, who sat a row over and two seats in front of him. The troll sat beside her. Halfway through class he passed her a note. She read it quietly, wrote something on it, and passed it back. The troll nodded and put the note in his folder. Mr. Campbell talked at length about the search for the historical King Arthur. In despair, Romulus turned his attention to Campbell. “The real King Arthur, if there was one, may have lived in 5th Century England, a hero because he drove out barbarian invaders. Much of our knowledge of King Arthur came from a historian, Geoffrey of Monmouth, who in the 12th Century set down the reign of British kings. He made most of it up, evidently. But it’s through Geoffrey that we first learn of Merlin.”

Romulus wrote names and dates disconsolately until Campbell said, “The death of Arthur and disappearance of Merlin are the end of wizardry in the world. Belief in mythological creatures fades with every passing century.” He said it within another context, but the words reminded him of something his dad had said about evolution and the magic. Romulus wondered if the biology classes ever touched on this alternate explanation for changes in the species.

Quickly Romulus wrote his thoughts below Campbell’s facts: “What if Merlin’s disappearance
caused
the downfall of mythological beings?” He thought he’d ask Dad about it later.

Fay concentrated on her own notes. The troll wrote something on a slip of paper, and with a husky whisper, handed it to the boy behind him, a freshman who somehow had been assigned this senior level class—Romulus had stepped between the boy and a pissed off football player earlier in the year, but other than a grateful “thank you,” they didn’t talk—and he gave the paper to Romulus, muttering, “Pass it on.” Behind Romulus sat one of the troll’s wrestling buddies. Romulus often found himself a courier for their stream of letters, mostly directions for the weekend’s parties. The torn paper sat, message up, on the desk—the troll hadn’t bothered to fold it. It read, “I’ll nail her tomorrow night.” He’d scrawled a lopsided happy face below, its eyes two squashed circles. Romulus’ fingers curled up, revolted by the thought of touching it.

Something whacked the back of his head.

“Hand it back, dog breath,” hissed the wrestler.

Romulus grabbed the note, twirled in his seat and banged it on the desk. The wrestler leaned away, a startled look in his eyes. He said, “Hey, I was just joking.”

After a few seconds, Romulus broke his glare and faced forward, and he heard a sigh of relief behind him.

“Boys?” said Campbell.

“Sorry, sir,” said Romulus.

For the rest of the period, the note ran through his brain: “I’ll nail her tomorrow.” The happy face looked more and more evil in his memory. He opened his text to the illustrations, and wasn’t surprised to see a resemblance between the drawing and the book’s woodcut of a troll.

After class, in the hallway once again, Romulus pushed his way through the crowd until he caught up with Fay, but once he reached her side, he wasn’t sure what to say. The certainty he’d had in class faded. Maybe the troll was talking about someone else. How could he ask her what she was doing tomorrow night? She carried her books against her chest, her chin down, as if she were mulling over something.

“Fay?” he said.

She looked up, smiled at him. “Hi, Romulus. Isn’t your next class the other way?”

He blushed; he could feel his face heating, and the heat embarrassed him even more. It was all he could do not to turn away, but he had committed himself now. He had to know.

“I wondered if you wanted to go to the Senior Choral Recital. It’s tomorrow at seven.” As the words slipped out, he knew he’d never be able to keep the date. At seven the sun was still up, but it was a two hour concert.

Her expression fell. “Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t. Not tomorrow. I . . . have other plans.”

In the pause he heard the truth. The troll’s note
was
about her. And he knew where they’d go too: Chaney Park, a spot on the bluffs overlooking town. It’s where the troll always took his dates. He was legendary about it.

Fay smiled again, her face perfect in the bustling hallway. Her eyes glistened. Even as his heart ached, he marveled at her eyes that were brighter than they should be, as if they reflected a crystal light no one else saw. Then he caught a hint of her smell. Like everyone else, she smelled of shampoo and deodorant, but underneath was her own essence, a spring-drenched forest, nothing fleshy at all.

“I’d like a rain check, though,” she said. “Ask me again another night.”