FSF, September 2007 Read online

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  Copyright ©2007 by Spilogale, Inc.

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  THE MAGAZINE OF

  FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION

  September * 58th Year of Publication

  * * * *

  NOVELETS

  WRONG NUMBER by Alexander Jablokov

  EPISODE SEVEN: LAST STAND AGAINST THE PACK IN THE KINGDOM OF THE PURPLE FLOWERS by John Langan

  THE MERCHANT AND THE ALCHEMIST'S GATE by Ted Chiang

  SHORT STORIES

  ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY by Albert E. Cowdrey

  ATALANTA LOSES AT THE INTERPANTHEONIC TRIVIA BEE by Heather Lindsley

  REQUIREMENTS FOR THE MYTHOLOGY MERIT BADGE by Kevin N. Haw

  IF WE CAN SAVE JUST ONE CHILD... by Robert Reed

  DEPARTMENTS

  BOOKS TO LOOK FOR by Charles de Lint

  BOOKS by James Sallis

  FILMS: ONCE WERE MOVIES by Lucius Shepard

  COMING ATTRACTIONS

  SCIENCE: VISIT THE METAVERSE AND CHANGE YOUR MIND by Paul Doherty and Pat Murphy

  CURIOSITIES by Douglas A. Anderson

  COVER BY BRYN BARNARD FOR “THE MERCHANT AND THE ALCHEMIST'S GATE”

  GORDON VAN GELDER, Publisher/Editor

  BARBARA J. NORTON, Assistant Publisher

  ROBIN O'CONNOR, Assistant Editor

  KEITH KAHLA, Assistant Publisher

  HARLAN ELLISON, Film Editor

  JOHN J. ADAMS, Assistant Editor

  CAROL PINCHEFSKY, Contests Editor

  JOHN M. CAPPELLO, Newsstand Circulation

  The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (ISSN 1095-8258), Volume 113, No. 3 Whole No. 665, September 2007. Published monthly except for a combined October/November issue by Spilogale, Inc. at $4.50 per copy. Annual subscription $50.99; $62.99 outside of the U.S. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Fantasy & Science Fiction, PO Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Publication office, 105 Leonard St., Jersey City, NJ 07307. Periodical postage paid at Hoboken, NJ 07030, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. Copyright © 2007 by Spilogale, Inc. All rights reserved.

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  GENERAL AND EDITORIAL OFFICE: PO BOX 3447, HOBOKEN, NJ 07030

  www.fsfmag.com

  Click a Link for Easy Navigation

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  CONTENTS

  Wrong Number by Alexander Jablokov

  Books To Look For by Charles de Lint

  Books by James Sallis

  Envoy Extraordinary by Albert E. Cowdrey

  Atalanta Loses at the Interpantheonic Trivia Bee by Heather Lindsley

  Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack In the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers by John Langan

  Requirements for the Mythology Merit Badge by Kevin N. Haw

  Films: Once Were Movies by Lucius Shepard

  If We Can Save Just One Child... by Robert Reed

  Coming Attractions

  Science: Visit the Metaverse and Change Your Mind by Paul Doherty & Pat Murphy

  The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate by Ted Chiang

  Fantasy&ScienceFiction MARKET PLACE

  Curiosities: Flower Phantoms by Ronald Fraser (1926)

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  Wrong Number by Alexander Jablokov

  Regarding this story, Mr. Jablokov says: Once, in an impoverished period, I owned a Subaru GLF that I had bought from a nonimpoverished friend who had abandoned it behind his house after it stopped working. It was an earnest car, a hard-working car, but its upbringing had resulted in many bad habits, among which was a need to visit the local repair shop every couple of months. Bob, of Uncle Russ's, had one piece of advice, which he gave me whenever I brought the car in: “Sell the car.” Eventually I did, and then missed my visits. Uncle Russ's is gone, replaced with a crisply efficient Valvoline, and so “Wrong Number” will have to stand as a belated Valentine to that vanished crew.

  Stephanie found herself wide awake at 2:13 a.m., remembering a phone number. Hers, but with one digit wrong.

  She could see the thing, rounded numbers on a cocktail napkin with a blue ship's wheel on it, her handwriting. The digit was wrong on purpose.

  She hadn't thought of that night since ... well, probably since it happened. She'd been working on the campaign of a state rep, and had started talking with some guy vaguely associated with the rep's auto leasing business at the low-key victory party. Decent-looking guy, nice jacket, with, as she remembered, an interest in collecting antique cars. Everyone was in a great mood.

  Then he began to seem creepy. Maybe it was the excessive emphasis on the size of the garage he kept his car collection in, or the way he made sure that she could see that the buttons on his jacket sleeve really buttoned, or the fact that along with the sleeve she also observed that he neither trimmed or cleaned his fingernails regularly. Whatever, she lost interest and decided to go home.

  Despite her watch checking and “now, where's my coat?” scan of the rack by the entrance, he didn't catch on, and asked for her phone number. She didn't want to give it to him. He became insistent, in an oddly compelling way. She was there alone, and, at that moment, felt weak. After a moment's hesitation, she wrote down a fake number, changing the fifth digit of the actual number. She'd heard of obsessives working their way through all ten variants of a wrong last digit, but the fifth seemed safe.

  And it worked. The feared call never came, and she forgot about the incident.

  Until now. But it was more than a memory now, it was a compulsion. She could not stop thinking about it.

  Around four, she gave up on trying to get back to sleep, and watched a couple of old episodes of Law & Order.

  It was like something on a camera lens, showing up in every picture. That number. That wrong number. It seemed like the worst thing she had ever done. Worse than the time she had called her seventh-grade friend Fran, who had a limp, “gimpy,” in a failed attempt to get the class queen bee, Mandy Beekman, to like her. Worse, even, than not calling her grandmother Eleanor in the last week before she died, even though it was clear that the kidneys had failed and that was it. When she'd gotten the call from her mother on Monday morning, with the funeral date, she'd implied without actually saying so that she'd had a chat with Gran just a day or two before the end. Nothing really interesting, no great revelations, but it was really nice that she had managed to talk once more to Gran before it was too late ... and it was that, that implied—no, real—lie to her mother that stuck with her.

  * * * *

  "Quick update,” her friend Marlene said. “You've been an incredible troll this past week."

  There didn't seem to be a good reply to that, so Stephanie just looked at the dead spider plant that had been on the bookshelf in Marlene's office for at least six months.

  "Is it still that stupid thing about the presentation?” Marlene said. “Everyone knows Edith was way out of line on that. Not your fault, and who cares anyway? Nobody even noticed."

  "'Everyone’ has been paying a lot of attention to things ‘nobody’ cares about."

  Marlene tossed her blond hair. She'd gotten a short cut last week, seemingly just so she could do that. “Okay, you've uncovered the logical flaw in my argument. You're still a troll."

  "I need a drink."

  "Brilliant
suggestion."

  The Cromlech was their high-end Friday after-work bar. None of their usual cronies had been able to make it that week, so Stephanie and Marlene were on their own. They picked seats near a mixed-sex group from some other workplace, away from bathrooms, drink pickup, and dart board, hoping to discourage drive-by sexual suggestions.

  As soon as the drinks arrived, Stephanie told Marlene about the phone number.

  "Isn't stuff like that just murder?” Marlene sipped her margarita across the salt. “Why do our minds have minds of their own?"

  "But it's not like some dumb pop song you can't forget. Somehow...."

  "What?"

  "More is hanging on it than that."

  "Like what? Futility? Mortality? Still no children? Existential meaninglessness? Drooping boobs?"

  "They're not drooping!"

  "God didn't invent support garments, honey. Madame Olga did. Another reason to doubt."

  "Do you ever regret having done something?” Stephanie asked.

  "Sure. ‘Why did I get the maple walnut? Wouldn't a scoop of the coffee have been a better choice? I don't even like maple, or walnut. What made me think the combination would be better?’”

  "You know what I mean!"

  Marlene examined her. “Okay, I guess I do. Do you think this guy could have been important to you? Like in a house-and-kids kind of way?"

  "That's just it. I don't. He was just a nice-looking guy who turned out to be not so nice."

  "Millions of those."

  "Exactly. So why am I obsessing about this one?"

  Marlene did not have a quick answer to that, so Stephanie sipped her own drink. Once she tasted the bite of the tequila under the lime juice and Cointreau, she couldn't stop. The Cromlech did not use a flavored corn syrup mix, but delivered something a grownup could drink. She drank steadily until there was nothing but a couple of bits of lime membrane at the bottom of the glass. The bartender, noticing her single-mindedness, had another ready even before she raised her finger.

  "Whoa,” Marlene said. “You better watch that. Best way to make sure you make decisions that lead to another such pointless discussion some time in the future."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake!” Stephanie suddenly found Marlene's hip-yet-wise attitude intolerable. The second drink tasted even better than the first. She tried to take it slowly, but failed.

  "Let me tell you a story.” Marlene, who never had a second drink, and wasn't even finished with the first one, ordered another one as well. “Junior year of college I got involved with this guy. Archaeologist. Not my usual line, you understand. You know I like ‘em big and stupid. I'll accept complexity in a Cabernet, but never in a man.” Seeing Stephanie's impatience, she hurried on. “I guess maybe we all go through our outdoorsy phase, just like we all once liked horses, even if it was just My Little Pony. Spencer had that tang of wood smoke. Specialized in Anasazi stuff, out in the Southwest. Got to go to a lot of pretty places.

  "Anyway, he was going away for a semester, to a dig in southern Utah. He wanted me to go with him. I didn't know we'd gotten that serious. I didn't want to go. I had other things on my mind, like getting through school, and wasn't interested in spending four months in a tent somewhere out in the desert, watching him clean dust off some potsherd with a camel's-hair brush.

  "It became kind of a big thing, and we had a fight, and he left. He published a few papers about his excavation, I think. My next semester didn't go well. Bad relationship, too much partying, failed a couple of classes. Everything kind of turned to crap, in other words. And I started to think about Spencer, about the clean dry desert, about the wind, about the clear blue sky, and the canyon walls, and the mysterious ruins, and realized how badly I had screwed up. I searched for him and found him, already junior faculty at San Francisco State. I planned a trip up there, thought I might surprise him, see if, at least, we could have dinner, and think about maybe fixing up what had gone wrong between us.

  "I was packing. I remember that. I had a bunch of clothes in stacks on the bed, and I reached in the back of the closet and pulled out a bag I hadn't used in a long time. I'd forgotten I even had it. It was the perfect size for an overnight bag. I opened it up. Inside was a photograph. It was of me and Spencer at some stupid party, our arms linked, holding drinks, smiling at the camera. Well, he was smiling. My head was gone. Someone—Spencer—had cut it out with scissors, and replaced it with a dog's head."

  Stephanie found herself resisting asking what breed of dog. “He called you a bitch?"

  "Stephanie, he cut my head off!"

  "You must have been devastated."

  "I was furious! But relieved. I don't know if I'd ever really believed something would be different if I could see him again, and go sit in the sun somewhere and drink lukewarm water out of Nalgene bottles, but this corked it. But how gracious of him, I realized later, to have made it so clear that that hope was ridiculous, and that I'd made the right choice in the first place. That none of it was my fault. Like salespeople who get nasty with you when you give their product a pass. Kind of lets you off the hook."

  "But this is different, Marlene. This is something I'm doing to myself."

  "Don't be so sure, girlfriend."

  Stephanie stopped herself from ordering another drink, but only by finishing Marlene's second, virtually untouched one.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You free tomorrow?” Marlene said. “I need to get some body work done on my car."

  "I didn't notice anything wrong with your car.” They'd driven over in it.

  "I guarantee you'll see it tomorrow."

  "This looks really recent.” The mechanic, a tall blond man with a serious face, knelt and examined Marlene's shattered right taillight.

  Stephanie wondered what the mechanic would say if she told him that Marlene had, in fact, backed deliberately into a Dumpster just that morning, after picking Stephanie up.

  "You know I don't like letting things like that go, Jason.” Marlene was blithe.

  "No, I don't know that."

  "Does it tell you anything?"

  "It tells me you could work on your driving."

  "Really.” Marlene arched her back. “Is that all?"

  Not having an answer, Jason scratched his head with scarred knuckles. Every once in a while, Marlene got a yen for “someone who works with his hands.” The relationships with plumbers, carpenters, and deli counter employees had never worked out well, and the wiring some horny but unlicensed electrician had installed in her bedroom had once set off the smoke alarms in her apartment during a dinner party. The fire crew had taken off with all the carpaccio.

  But there was something desperate about Marlene's giddy flirtiness with the somber mechanic that showed the situation was more complicated than the usual predatory approach. While the two of them tested their anxieties on each other, Stephanie took a turn around the dark repair shop. Light had pretty much given up struggling through the wire mesh safety glass of the windows. The tarp-shrouded cars seemed to have been there for generations. Two guys way past retirement age, pointed out by Marlene as Cliff and Gordon, slowly hand polished the one alive-looking car in the place, a blue Alfa Romeo Spider, a sweet little convertible. One man had started out white, the other black, but both were now a general sort of grease-covered gray.

  "You missed a spot."

  "That's on your side, brother."

  "I don't have a side. I'm kind of like overseeing this operation."

  "Since when?"

  "Since you missed putting fresh tissues in the glove box. They gotta be fresh, every week. You know that."

  They both paused, looked over at Jason and Marlene.

  "Think he'll ever get tired of this?” Cliff microscopically adjusted the Alfa Romeo's rearview mirror.

  "And move on? Who can say?"

  "Hey, isn't that kind of your job around here? Predicting things?"

  "Sure.” Gordon put some more polish on his cloth. “I can predict that you better be
nice to me, because you'll never get another job, flapping that chamois the way you do."

  Stephanie walked back around, past the partition that separated the office from the shop. She wondered if they had a refrigerator in there. She could do with something cold to drink. That damn wrong phone number. She was still thinking about it. If Marlene had brought her here to distract her, it wasn't working.

  "I think you'd better go somewhere else,” Jason was saying. “I don't think I can handle this."

  "It's just a taillight!” Marlene's voice quavered. “Don't you do taillights?"

  "You know how I work. You know what I do. Please don't treat it casually."

  Stephanie felt something cold on her knuckles and jumped.

  "Sorry.” It was Cliff, the old white guy, with a Diet Coke. He had hair on his ears, and white hair straggling out from under a PawSox cap. “Did you want regular?"

  "No, this is fine, thanks."

  "Hey, Jason!” Gordon, the old black guy, lumbered by with a tailpipe on his shoulder. “Help this lady out. You need to actually fix something that will stay fixed."

  Jason and Marlene stopped their discussion and looked at Stephanie, Jason pouty-lipped in an oddly aristocratic way, Marlene nearer tears than she usually allowed herself to get. The world seemed full of nothing but romantic disappointment.

  "Where are you going with that?” Cliff looked at Gordon.

  "It's got to go in the back there. Top shelf."

  "Middle shelf. You're making a mess."

  "I am not!"

  Jason came quietly into the office, sat at the battered steel desk. “You have a problem, then."

  "My car is fine."

  "Not with your car."

  So, just like that, Stephanie found herself sitting down and telling an absolute stranger about the guilt she felt about having given some guy an incorrect phone number. And she didn't even feel like an idiot doing it.

  "What else do you remember?” Now that he'd made his decision, Jason was intent and clinical. “Not about the evening as a whole. Just about writing down the number. About him, about that man. Close your eyes. Let the image come up. Then think about your peripheral vision. It's not as sharp, but sometimes it's surprising what it will catch."