The New Voices of Science Fiction Page 36

  When I finally hit my brain’s unlock code, it latched onto a twisty little minor descent. The same rhythm as the whale song, but a different progression, a different riff. A tiny theft, the kind all musicians make. There was only so much original to do within twelve notes. Hell, most classic punk was built on a couple of chords. What did Lou Reed say? One chord is fine, two chords is pushing it, three chords you’re into jazz?

  I knew what I was singing about before I even sang it. That StageHolo offer, and the idea of playing for a paid audience night after night, the good and the bad parts. The funny thing about bargains with the devil was you so rarely heard about people turning him down; maybe sometimes it was worth your soul. I scrambled in my gig bag pocket for a pen and paper. When I came up with only a Sharpie, I wrote the lyrics on my arm. The chords would keep. I’d remember them. Would probably remember the lyrics too, but I wasn’t chancing it.

  Silva stepped out a little while later, wearing only a ratty towel around his waist. “There’s a bucket shower out the back!”

  “Show me in a sec, but first, check it out.” I played him what I had.

  His eyes widened. “Be right back.”

  He returned a moment later wearing jeans, bass in hand. We both had to play hard, and I had to whisper-sing to hear the unplugged electric instruments, but we had something we both liked before long.

  “Tonight?” he asked me.

  “Maybe . . . depends on how early we get there, I guess. And whether there’s an actual soundcheck. Do you remember?”

  He shook his head. “Four-band lineup, at a warehouse. That’s all I remember. But maybe if we leave pretty soon, we can set up early? It’s only about three hours, I think.”

  He showed me where the shower was, and I took advantage of the opportunity. The bike kids appeared with a bag of lumpy apples, and we ate the apples with our omelets, sitting on the floor. Best breakfast in ages. They explained the barracks—the story involved an arts grant and an old school and abandoned buildings and a cat sanctuary and I got lost somewhere along the way, working on my new song in my head.

  After breakfast, we made our excuse that we had to get on the road. They walked us back the way we came, around the front.

  My smile lasted as long as it took us to round the corner. As long as it took to see Daisy was gone.

  “Did you move her, Jacky?” Silva asked.

  “You’ve got the keys, man.”

  Silva patted his pockets, and came up with the key. We walked closer. Glass.

  I stared at the spot, trying to will Daisy back into place. Blink and she’d be back. How had we let this happen? I went through the night in my head. Had I heard glass breaking, or the engine turning over? I didn’t think so. How many times had we left her outside while we played or ate or showered or slept? I lay down on the path, away from the glass, and looked up at the morning sky.

  The bike kids looked distraught, all talking at once. “This kind of thing never happens.” “We were only trying to help.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I said, after a minute. Then louder, when they didn’t stop. “It wasn’t your fault.” They closed their mouths and looked at me.

  I sat up and continued, leaning back on my hands, trying to be the calm one, the adult. “The bad news is we’re going to need to call the police. The good news is, you’re not squatting, so we don’t have to work too hard to explain what we were doing here. The bad news is whoever stole the van can go really far on that tank. The good news is they’re probably local and aren’t trying to drive to Florida. Probably just kids who’ve never gotten to drive something that didn’t drive itself. They’ll abandon her nearby when she runs out of gas.” I was trying to make myself feel better as much as them.

  “And maybe they hate Chinese food,” Jacky said. “Or maybe the smell’ll make them so hungry they have to stop for Chinese food. We should try all the local Chinese food places first.”

  Silva had stepped away from the group, already on the phone with the police. I heard snippets, even though his back was turned. License plate. Yes, a van. Yes, out-of-state plates. No, he didn’t own it, but the owner was with him. Yes, we’d wait. Where else did we have to go? Well, Pittsburgh, but it didn’t look like we’d be getting there any time soon.

  He hung up and dug his hands into his pockets. He didn’t turn around or come back to the group. I should probably have gone over to him, but he didn’t look like he wanted to talk.

  The kids scattered before the police arrived, all but Emma disappearing into the building. Jacky walked off somewhere as well. It occurred to me I didn’t really know much of his history for all the time we’d been riding together.

  The young policewoman who arrived to take our report was standoffish at first, like we were the criminals. Emma explained the situation. No officer, not squatting, here are the permits. I kept the van registration and insurance in a folder in my backpack, which helped on that end too, so that she came over to our side a little. Just a little.

  “Insurance?”

  “Of course.” I rustled in the same folder, presented the card to her. She looked surprised, and I realized she had expected something electronic. “But only liability and human driver.”

  Surprised her again. “So the van isn’t self-driving?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ve had her—it—for twenty-three years.”

  “But you didn’t convert when the government rebates were offered?”

  “No, ma’am. I love driving.”

  She gave me a funny look.

  “Was anything in the van?” she asked.

  I sighed and started the list, moving from back to front.

  “One drum kit, kind of a hodgepodge of different makes, Ampeg bass rig, Marshall guitar amp, suitcase full of gig clothes. A sleeping bag. A box of novels, maybe fifty of them. Um, all the merchandise: records and T-shirts and stuff to sell . . .” I kept going through all the detritus in my head, discarding the small things: collapsible chopsticks, restaurant menus, pillows, jackets. Those were all replaceable. My thoughts snagged on one thing.

  “A road atlas. Rand McNally.”

  The officer raised her eyebrows.“A what?”

  “A road atlas. A book of maps.”

  “You want me to list that?”

  “Well, it’s in there. And it’s important, to me anyway. It’s annotated. All the places we’ve played, all the places we like to stop and we don’t.” I tried to hide the hitch in my voice. Don’t cry, I told myself. Cry over the van, if you need to. Not over the atlas. You’ll make another. It might take years, but it could be done.

  It wasn’t just the atlas, obviously. Everything we had hadn’t been much, and it was suddenly much less. I was down to the cash in my pocket, the date book, the single change of clothes in my backpack, my guitar. How could we possibly rebuild from there? How do you finish a tour without a van? Or amps, or drums?

  The officer held out her phone to tap a copy of her report over to me.

  “Non-comm,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Silva stepped in for the first time. He hadn’t even opened his mouth to help me list stuff, but now he held up his phone. “Send it to me, officer.”

  She did, with a promise to follow up as soon as she had any leads. Got in her squad car. She had to actually use the wheel and drive herself back down the rutted path; I guessed places like this were why police cars had a manual option. She had probably written us off already, either way.

  I turned to Silva, but he had walked off. I followed him down the path toward an old warehouse.

  “Stop!” I said, when it was clear he wasn’t going to. He turned toward me. I expected him to be as sad as me, but he looked angrier than I had ever seen him, fists clenched and jaw tight.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Calm down. It’ll be okay. We’ll figure something out.”

  “How? How, Luce?”

  “They’ll find Daisy. Or we’ll figure something out.”

  “Daisy’s just the start o
f it. It’s amps and records and T-shirts and everything we own. I don’t even have another pair of underwear. Do you?”

  I shook my head. “We can buy . . .”

  “We can buy underwear at the Superwally. But not all that other stuff. We can’t afford it. This is it. We’re done. Unless.”

  “Unless?”

  He unclenched his left fist and held out a scrap of paper. I took it from him and flattened it. Nikki Kellerman’s business card, which had been on my amp when I last saw it.

  “No,” I said.

  “Hear me out. We have nothing left. Nothing. You know she’d hook us up if we called now and said we’d sign. We’d get it all back. New amps, new merch, new stage clothes. And we wouldn’t need a new van if we were doing holo shows. We could take a break for a while.”

  “Are you serious? You’d stay in one place and do holo shows?” I waited for an answer. He stomped at a piece of glass in the dirt, grinding it with his boot heel. “We’ve been playing together for twenty years and I wouldn’t have guessed you’d ever say yes to that.”

  “Come off it, Luce. You know I don’t object the way you do. You know that, or you’d have run it past me before turning her down. I know we’re not a democracy, but you used to give me at least the illusion I had a choice.”

  I bit my lip. “You’re right. I didn’t run it past you. And actually, I didn’t turn her down in the end. I didn’t say yes, but she said some stuff that confused me.”

  That stopped him short. Neither of us said anything for a minute. I looked around. What a weird place to be having this fight; I always figured it would come, but in the van. I waited for a response, and when none came, I prodded. “So you’re saying that’s what you want?”

  “No! Maybe. I don’t know. It doesn’t always seem like the worst idea. But now I don’t think we have another option. I think I could have kept going the way we were for a while longer, but rebuilding from scratch?” He shook his head, then turned and walked away again. I didn’t follow this time.

  Back at the building where we had stayed, the bike kids had reappeared, murmuring amongst themselves. Jacky leaned against the front stoop, a few feet from them. I sat down in the grass opposite my drummer.

  “What do you think of StageHolo? I mean really?”

  He spit on the ground.

  “Me too,” I agreed. “But given the choice between starting over with nothing, and letting them rebuild us, what would you do? If there weren’t any other options.”

  He ran a hand over his braids. “If there weren’t any other options?”

  I nodded.

  “There are always other options, Luce. I didn’t sign up with you to do fake shows in some fake warehouse for fake audiences. I wouldn’t stay. And you wouldn’t last.”

  I pulled a handful of grass and tossed it at him.

  He repeated himself. “Really. I don’t know what you’d do. You wouldn’t be you anymore. You’d probably still come across to some people, but you’d have the wrong kind of anger. Anger for yourself, instead of for everybody. You’d be some hologram version of yourself. No substance.”

  I stared at him.

  “People always underestimate the drummer, but I get to sit behind you and watch you every night. Trust me.” He laughed, then looked over my shoulder. “I watch you, too, Silva. It goes for you, too.”

  I didn’t know how long Silva had been behind me, but he sat down between us now, grunting as he lowered himself to the ground. He leaned against Jacky and put his grimy glassdust boots in my lap.

  I shoved them off. “That was an old-man grunt.”

  “I’m getting there, old lady, but you’ll get there first. Do you have a plan?”

  I looked over where the bike kids had congregated. “Hey, guys! Do any of you have a car? Or, you know, know anybody who has a car?”

  The bike kids looked horrified, then one—Dijuan?—nodded. “My sister has a Chauffeur.”

  “Family sized?”

  Dijuan’s face fell.

  Back to the drawing board. Leaning back on my elbows, I thought about all the other bands we could maybe call on, if I knew anybody who had come off the road, who might have a van to sell if Daisy didn’t reappear. Maybe, but nobody close enough to loan one tonight. Except . . .

  “You’re not saying you’re out, right?” I asked Silva. “You’re not saying StageHolo or nothing? ’Cause I really can’t do it. Maybe someday, on our terms, but I can’t do it yet.”

  He closed his eyes. “I know you can’t. But I don’t know what else to do.”

  “I do. At least for tonight.”

  I told him who to call.

  Truly arrived with her sister’s family-sized Chauffeur an hour later. We had to meet her up on the road.

  “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but we’ll get there,” she said. The third row and all the foot space was packed tight with the Moby K. Dick amps and drums and cables.

  “Thank you so much,” I said, climbing into what would be the driver’s seat if it had a wheel or pedals. It felt strange, but oddly freeing as the car navigated its way from wherever we were toward where we were going.

  I was supposed to be upset. But we had a ride to the gig, and gear to play. We’d survive without merch for the time being. Somebody in Pittsburgh would help us find a way to Baltimore if Daisy hadn’t been found by then, or back to Columbus to reclaim her.

  With enough time to arrange it, the other bands would let us use their drums and amps at most of the shows we had coming up, and in the meantime we still had our guitars and a little bit of cash. We’d roll on, in Daisy or a Chauffeur, or on bikes with guitars strapped to our backs. No StageHolo gig could end this badly; this was the epic, terrible, relentlessness of life on the road. We made music. We were music. We’d roll on. We’d roll on. We’d roll on.

  A STUDY IN OILS

  KELLY ROBSON

  Kelly Robson’s short fiction has been published in Asimov’s , Tor.com, Clarkesworld , and Uncanny . She has been a wine and spirits writer for Chatelaine Magazine and has contributed several essays on writing to Clarkesworld ’s “Another Word” column. Her novella “Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach” was a finalist for the 2019 Nebula, Hugo, Theodore Sturgeon, Locus, and Aurora Awards.

  “A Study in Oils” is a gentle story about rehabilitation, remorse, and redemption through art.

  HALFWAY UP THE WINDING cliff-side guideway, Zhang Lei turned his bike around. He was exhausted from three days of travel and nauseated, too, but that wasn’t the problem. He could always power through physical discomfort. But the trees, the rocks, the open sky above, and the mountains closing in—it was all too strange. He kept expecting something to drop on his head.

  He pinged Marta, the social worker in Beijing Hive who’d orchestrated his escape from Luna seventy-two hours earlier. Forget Paizuo, he whispered as his bike coasted the guideway’s downslope. This is too weird.

  Turn that bike back around or I’ll hit your disable button, Marta whispered back.

  You wouldn’t.

  He turned the bike’s acceleration to maximum.

  I would. You can spend the next two weeks lying at the bottom of a gully while the tribunal decides what to do with you. Turn around.

  No, I’m going back to the Danzhai roadhouse.

  When she scowled, her whole face crumpled into a mass of wrinkles. She didn’t even look like a person anymore.

  I’d do anything to keep you alive, kid, and I don’t even like you. She jabbed at him with an age-spotted finger, as if she could reach across the continent and poke him in the chest. Turn back around or I’ll do it.

  He believed her. Nobody had hit his disable button since he’d left Luna, but Marta was an old ex-Lunite and that meant she was both tough and mean. Zhang Lei slowed his bike, rotated back to the guideway’s uphill track, and gave the acceleration dial a vicious twist.

  You don’t like me? he asked.

  Maybe a little. Marta flipped through the graphs of his biom. She had
full access to that, too, and could check everything from his hormone levels to his sleep cycle. You’re getting dehydrated. Drink some water. And slow your bike. You’re going to make yourself puke.

  I feel fine, he lied.

  Marta rolled her eyes. Relax. You’ll love Paizuo. Nobody wants to kill you there.

  She slapped the connection down, and the image of her elderly face was replaced by steep, verdant mountainside. Danzhai County was thick with an impossible greenness, in layers of bushes, trees, grasses, and herbs he had no name for.

  Everything was unfamiliar here. He knew he was deep in southwestern China, but that was about all. He knew he was surrounded by mountains, with Danzhai’s transit hub behind him. It was a two-pad skip station, the smallest he’d ever seen, next to a narrow lake surrounded by hills, everything green but the sky—which actually was blue, like everyone always said about Earth—and the buildings. Those were large, brown, and open to the air as if atmospheric weather was nothing.

  An atmosphere people could breathe. That was Earth’s one unique claim. Unlike Luna, or Venus, or Mars, or any of the built environments in the solar system, here in Danzhai and a few other places on Earth, humans lived every day exposed to weather. It was traditional, or something.

  Weather was overrated, Zhang Lei decided. The afternoon was so humid, he’d sweated through his shirt. And the air wasn’t clean. Bits of fluff floated in it, and it smelled weird, too. Birds zipped through the air like hovertoys launched from tree limbs—were they even birds? He’d seen so few on Luna.

  At least he was alone. A year ago, he would have hated not having anyone to goof around with or show off for. No coach, no team, no fans. Now he was grateful. Marta was watching out for him, always on the other end of a ping if anything went wrong. It was a relief not having to stay ultra-alert.

  He pinged Marta.

  How long do I have to stay in Paizuo?

  Her face appeared again. She was shoveling noodles into her mouth with a pair of chopsticks. The sight of the food made his stomach heave.

  At least two weeks. More if I can wrangle an extension. Ideally, I’d like you to stay until the tribunal decides your case.