Descended from Darkness: Apex Magazine Vol I Read online

  "And what would I change?" the last SF writer asks.

  "Well...maybe what gets written, how it is received and so forth."

  "Too late, it's already been done, seventy-six years ago in a story called 'The Longest Science Fiction Story Ever Told.'"

  "Ah, but that was a story. I am talking about life, altering our reality, making a difference."

  The last SF writer hawks spits something unpleasant into his napkin. He says, "It will never work."

  "Why not?"

  "There has never been a successful science fiction story involving time travel, that didn't end ironically, or dramatically. Call it a writer's intuition, but I'd wager that even if their so-called time machine worked, altering the past would not achieve the desired goals. It would only make things far worse."

  "How could you possibly know that?" the agent asks.

  "I am not the first to know it, just the last. Harry Evans knew it. The reasoning is clear: the conditions were intolerable. A time machine? Ha! That will never work out."

  * * * *

  6

  The last SF writer sits in the all-night diner, or perhaps he is asleep on his bed in the tiny, one-room studio he maintains around the corner from a diner which he has never actually visited. It is August 15, 2041 and as he nibbles at his toast and soup, or perhaps just rolls over in bed to face away from the calendar, he realizes that he is probably the only person on Earth who knows that one hundred years ago today, "Nightfall" first made its appearance on the magazine racks.

  "The greatest science fiction story ever written was more prescient than anyone could have possibly known," he says to his agent---to the empty room. "We humans used to be fascinated by the stars. They roused the spirit of our ancestors and some of the mystery that surrounded them seemed to evaporate over the centuries."

  "You are not making sense," the agent says; or so the last SF writer thinks to himself. "This is why you stopped writing; this is why you haven't written a story in thirty years."

  "Some of that fascination," the last SF writer continues, "inspired a couple of generations of writers, and during that brief interval, they shined like a golden sun.

  "Now, we are afraid of the stars. We do not understand them; cannot understand them. No---worse---we have forgotten them. We focused on trivialities, a quest for the ultimate in leisure when we should have been inspired to focus on industry and the quest for knowledge. That is what those men and women inspired in others. Somewhere along the way, though, something went terribly wrong."

  He casts about the restaurant as though looking for an answer, catches the eye of the waitress and holds up his empty cup of coffee. She quickly refills the cup, and the last SF writer reaches toward the small nightstand next to his bed to take a sip of water from the glass there, but manages only to knock the glass to the floor with a crash. He does not have the strength to get out of bed and clean it up.

  "Perhaps it is a cycle," the agent says.

  "Yes, a cycle. And maybe someday, it will start itself up all over again from scratch. That would be nice to believe, would it not? All of the old stories, retold exactly as they were told then, but to sound brand new. Like the library of Babel..." his voice trails off.

  The agent (who is now a discorporate whisper in the mind of the last SF writer) says, "The question remains: will they get it right?"

  The last SF writer does not know the answer to this. He can hope, but he does not know. He will not know. He says nothing for a long time, laying very still in the dark, empty room around the corner from the "Live Nudes" sign, his breath coming at irregular intervals. He thinks only of the great stories, and does not think of the future. He thinks of the stars, which others cannot see and which he cannot see, but which he knows are there, slowing winking out one by one.

  Waiting for Jakie

  Barbara Krasnoff

  I like the blue pills best. I have others, of course---the purple ones, and the green and yellow ones. The tiny white ones? Those are just for blood pressure, and all they really do, in my opinion, is give a living to the drug companies. Not that I have anything against drug companies, God forbid; after all, they not only allow me to face each day, but gave my son Benjamin a decent living for many years until the AIDS got him, poor boy.

  Anyway, the blue pills are the ones I take when I'm feeling nervous or depressed, which is most of the time, actually. I tell the doctors this, and they try to put me on other medications, more long term, they call it, but a week goes by and I'm feeling like taking a steak knife to my wrists, so I throw away the new ones and go back to the ones that at least keep me operating on, as Samuel used to say, all six cylinders.

  And sometimes, if I've taken just a little bit more than I'm supposed to---not much, only a few more milligrams, nothing, an extra pill or more, who would begrudge it?---then, if I squint my eyes a little and let the living room furniture blur a bit, then sometimes, if I'm lucky, I can see Jakie. Not very clear, I admit, and usually only a little, but it's him. It's him.

  And I miss him so much. Our time together was short, so short, but it was like a lifetime together. It should have been a lifetime together.

  Usually he's sitting in the big stuffed chair where Samuel used to sit, with his long legs stretched out in front, and a book or a newspaper in his large hands. I love it when I can see Jakie. I could just sit and look at him forever. He's tall, and thin, and his hair is still thick and brown. And his eyes---oy, his eyes. Those eyes are what I used to dream about after he left---large and dark and ironic. Like my father's. Which is why I first trusted him, that day when he and the other Americans came walking into the camp.

  But enough of me.

  He doesn't always read, Jakie. Sometimes he leans his chin on his hand and stares off to the side, his head nodding slightly, up and down. He's listening to music, I think, maybe one of the Italian operas he was so fond of. Once, one of the girls found an old scratched recording of Rigoletto in a bombed-out house somewhere, and I traded her a full meal for it and gave it to Jakie, and he found an old wind-up victrola and brought it to his quarters. As soon as the music started, E Donna Mobile, all the other soldiers started snorting through their noses like horses, as though Jakie listening to opera was the funniest thing they'd seen.

  * * * *

  But I saw how the record helped him go away from the war, and I knew that this was the mark of a truly civilized man. I know---I grew up in a beautiful, rich home outside of Berlin, and we attended concerts, and went on holiday in Switzerland. When we went to the theatre, men and women in lovely clothing would nod respectfully at my parents and my uncle and smile at me, and I would feel so special. Jakie may have been born in America, but he too was special.

  I don't think he sees me, Jakie, when he sits in Samuel's chair. If I thought that, I'd die. Me with my bloated body and thin hair and God! I used to be so beautiful.

  Even right after the camp, when I looked like a scarecrow, my hair still short and dry and no meat on my bones, Jakie used to tease me and tell me that I looked like Veronica Lake. And I'd laugh at him and say no, I'm too skinny. And finally he came to the barracks one day, where we were waiting to find out what would happen and where we should go, and he told me to get two girl friends, we were "going out on the town."

  And he got me a beautiful dress, and a nice pair of shoes---I never asked where he got them. And, would you believe it, lipstick---and three of us girls got together, and brushed our hair until it hurt, and scrubbed, and colored our lips and a little on our cheeks. We went to a local cafe where Jakie and two other boys whose names I don't remember, we sat and the Americans gave the proprietor, a German pig who stared at us as though he wondered why we weren't still in the camp where we belonged, they gave him money and told him they wanted wine and sausages, and we all drank, and ate, and tried to understand each other, and one of the Americans said something that made Jakie slap him on the head, and they all laughed, and when I asked Jakie in Yiddish what the boy said, he wouldn't say.


  I was alone, and my family was dead, and we were diseased Jewish whores from the camps, but we ate, and drank, and pretended we were regular girls out on dates with three boys who would try to steal a kiss and then deliver us back to our parents. Oh, god. I was so happy that evening.

  And when I went back with Jakie, and kissed him, and wanted to give him of my own free will what I had been forced to give up for the last three years, he kissed me gently as if I was a bride, and told me that we had the rest of our lives and that I deserved more than a forest behind the barracks.

  I let him take me back. The two other girls told me I was an idiot. And they were right.

  Because in the morning, Jakie and the lovely boy soldiers were gone. And although he had promised to write, I never heard from him again. (Years later, Samuel said he could probably find my soldier---I had told him some of it, but not all---but I told him no. It was too late. I was married, and older, and didn't want to know.)

  Eventually, I found a job as a secretary to one of the Red Cross officials. And one day Samuel walked in, quiet and clean and polite, in a beautiful suit that made him look like a banker or a movie star, although he wasn't really tall enough. I thought then, what was a Jew doing in a suit like that, with so much meat on him? I thought, a collaborator, a bastard who sold Jewish lives in trade for his own. Later, I found out he had escaped and worked for the OSS, the American spies. And what did he do during the war? He never told me.

  But he looked so like the boys I used to see at the skiing lodges where we spent our school holidays that my breath caught in my throat. And it was the same for Samuel---he told me later that when he first saw me, for one moment he was walking into the office of his father's shul where, he said, his friend's pretty sister used to help with the paperwork. So we found each other in a mist of dreams of the dead.

  That is why I don't like admitting that it is Jakie I see, and not Samuel. After all, Samuel was my dear husband for nearly fifty years, and it was his chair, and he was the one who took care of me and tried to help me. When we were living in Berlin, and when I found out I was pregnant and told Samuel that I would kill the baby and myself before I would let it be born in that damned country, didn't he tell his bosses that he had to leave Europe, and bring me to America? And when one day I started crying and couldn't stop, didn't he take me to that doctor who gave me those pills and said they'd help me? And if they didn't help me the way he'd planned, if I needed to take more of them over the years, was it his fault? He meant it for the best.

  And now Samuel is dead. My poor Benjamin, the only child we had, our hope for the future, is dead. And Jakie, if he is still alive, is probably married to some smart American woman with smart American children. And he is probably fat, and balding, and has forgotten all about me.

  But I don't care.

  I can still see my Jakie in my living room, thin and dark and laughing like when he took me to dinner. But he is still misty, still like a dream. So I limp to the bathroom, and find my pills, all the different colors and shapes, and take them back to the living room with a glass of water. I take two more pills and wait for a few minutes, and then I squint my eyes and concentrate like I used to concentrate over my French lessons as a girl. And suddenly, I don't have to pretend any more---Jackie is here, sharp and clear and looking at me with that saucy American grin on his face. I take two more pills and stand, and so does he, and I take his hand and lead him back to the cafe.

  And we are sitting at the table again, and I can hear the chatter of the other two couples. My stomach is full, and I am wearing a nice dress and real shoes, and I take Jakie's hand, and he takes one of the wine bottles off the table, and we stand and walk into the forest while his friends laugh and cheer and call out things in English that would probably have made my mother faint. But I don't care---when we are far enough away, I kiss Jakie hard on the lips. He tells me that we have the rest of our lives, but I know better this time. I will have this moment, this lovely moment.

  After, Jakie strokes my hair, and touches my lips, and says he loves me, and will find out how he can get permission to marry me and take me to America. But now, he says, he's hungry, and he goes off to find some food, and I sit in the pine needles and straighten my clothes, and take out the comb he gave me to fix my hair. There is still some wine in the bottle, and I raise it to the strange God who killed so many but let me live, and drink it down.

  And then, out of the corner of my eye, I see an old woman who is standing a little ways off. She is a terrible old woman; her hair is white and thinning, her figure is thick and flabby underneath the cotton dress; she wears slippers on her nasty bare feet and only a single gold ring on her wrinkled hands. She smiles at me. "Now you are happy," she says.

  Happy? Stupid old woman---how can I be happy? I am thin and used up. My family is dead, my childhood is gone, and I have spent three years screwing Nazi soldiers so that I can live.

  The old woman starts to cry. "I thought this was the right time," she sobs, and I can't stand it, so I stand and walk into the forest. It is an old, beautiful forest, full of moss and thick trees. They remind me of the tall firs near our home, and the hours I spent as a girl playing there, and dreaming about my future. In the woods next to my uncle's house. Before.

  My uncle's large home with the red shutters and large wooden door, and the fat cat who would not stay in the house no matter how often we tried to shut her in, and Peter the butler who frightened me because he was so tall and stern, but who would let me sit in the kitchen and watch the servants prepare dinner. This morning my father and my uncle were quieter than usual after the meal, and I knew it was because of the letter my uncle had received that morning, and that it had something to do with the political situation. They talked together until my mother came over, and touched my father on the shoulder. He smiled at her, and then we played cards because it was raining outside.

  The rain stops, and although my mother tells me to put on my galoshes, it's still wet outside, I run outside and stand in the grass. It is lovely; in the sunlight, the wet grass is as bright a green as I have ever seen in my life.

  There is a noise, and I look down the wide drive, and there are men in uniforms approaching, the sun bouncing off their belt buckles and buttons. I'm wearing my favorite dress, the one that my uncle just bought me for my thirteenth birthday party, and I'm so glad that I'm wearing it now because there is a handsome soldier behind the four men who is dressed differently than the others. His uniform is dirty and creased and he needs a shave, but he has lovely brown hair and nice eyes.

  The adults have come out too, despite the wet. My mother says my name, low and with a tremor in her voice that is so strange I turn and look at her. Her face has gone still and she is standing so stiffly that for a moment she doesn't look like my mother. She is motioning me to come back to the house in quick, angry, waves of her hand, as though she is afraid somebody will see her.

  My father and my uncle are closer, though. They have walked down the wide front drive, and have now stopped, waiting. My father stands a little behind my uncle, his pipe in his mouth. His hands are clasped behind his back. My uncle, shorter and stouter, is shaking his head just a little, the way he does when I come to him with some complaint about my mother, his hands pushed deep into his pockets.

  Just beyond them is a strange woman standing on the grass, wearing a flowered dress that is a too big on her. She is very thin and has funny short hair and she is smiling at me. Nobody else seems to notice her---maybe because they are all looking at the soldiers.

  "Now you are happy," she says, and that sounds strange at first. But then I realize that the sun is shining, and I am with my family, and looking forward to my birthday, and only worried about my algebra homework and whether I'll ever grow breasts.

  "She can't be happy. Jakie isn't here," and it isn't the young woman talking, but an old woman who looks a bit like the beggar in town who sells eggs by the road. She is very ugly, but then she smiles at me too, so to be po
lite I smile back.

  My mother calls my name louder but instead I run to my uncle and take him by the arm. Before I can ask, he says quietly, not looking at me, "Darling, go to your mama. Now, please."

  The child pauses, not knowing what to do. She looks back at the soldiers and squints at something---and there, down the driveway, as insubstantial as hope, is a tall young man with dark hair and eyes, and suddenly it's hard to breathe. "Jakie!" we scream. "Save me!" But he is not alone---he is holding the hand of a stranger, a woman with knowing American eyes, and he is not looking at us.

  We two, the camp whore and the crazy old woman, remember running to our mother's side, watching as the world suddenly changed, but we know that this time she will not go. We watch as the young girl in her first grownup dress stands and holds her uncle's arm, her hands only trembling a little. She is young enough to be brave; to believe, to the bottom of her soul, that nothing really bad can happen.

  The old woman is sniffling again---doesn't she ever stop?---and her nose is all red. "I thought he would save me from this," the old woman moans. "From the memories. I thought he would save me."

  I stroke her hair, and remember the lipstick, and the cafe, and Jakie's kind eyes. "I know," I tell her. "I know. But we will have to do it ourselves."

  She nods, and wipes her eyes. "You are right," she says. "Of course. It's all up to us."

  My uncle has stepped forward, and one of the clean German soldiers, an officer I think, takes a gun from his pocket and points it at him just like the gangsters in the American movies. I know I should run back, but I won't leave my uncle. "You fucking Jew," the officer says, calm as if he were just saying hello, "You fucking rich Jew, you think you own the world?"

  My uncle pushes me away. "Back to the house," he says, his teeth clenched, every word distinct. "Now! Do you hear?"

  The soldiers are scaring me, so I look at the two women. They are crying about something, but then they hold their arms out to me. "Come, sweetheart," says the old lady. "It's a beautiful morning. Forget the handsome American soldier. He will not save you. Come to us---come and show us your lovely new dress."