Read Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 for Free Online Page B

for several minutes. "It was all right," he said. "Thanks," he added, though he wasn't sure the man was concerned. Jimmy took a drink of warm water. The clammy air made him shiver. Quarles looked back and forth between Jimmy and the prisoner.
    "What do you want to ask me?" Jimmy said.
    "This gentleman here. You think he's... a brother?" One eyebrow cocked.
    "What, black?"
    "Yes." Both brows came up. "Buh-lack."
    "The file... I think the file says he's white." Jimmy's own father was half-white, but not to most eyes; Jimmy's aunt was pale, straight-haired without ever touching relaxer.
    Quarles nodded his head side to side. "Oh, well, if the
file
says so...." Jimmy regarded the prisoner with altered eyes. "Want a closer look? It's easier if you don't use that pad." Quarles touched the wall screen, and a green dot appeared beneath his finger. He let his weapon hang from its strap as he brought up his right hand and spread the fingers to make a box that framed the prisoner's face. He tapped the box, and the face took up the entire wall. The orange-brown eyes took in everything. Jimmy had taken a step backward without realizing it. There was
something
to the shape of the face.
    Another key to the passageway:
Hidden. Even when seen, still hidden. Only you know who you truly are.
    Quarles said, "You've really got to find that manual."
8. Hole in the World
    Jimmy drove without seeing the road, seeing instead—reenacted, himself in the narrative—the eyewitness account he'd read online.
    A street between shops becomes the turning sky; the sky retreats as the helpless driver sees the world narrow and darken on all sides. A scream rummaged up along Jimmy's throat, though he didn't himself make a sound. Anyone in such a situation would scream without thinking someone might hear, only because it's what a person does, cry out for help, whether or not you believe anyone might be near enough to listen. The driver lies sideways, pinned, and the car shudders deeper still. Then comes the shock of icy water gushing in. And then, against the impending dark finale, the door grinds back and away. You're hauled up, drenched and breathless, into the light. He has you in his arms.
    Jimmy gasped.
    Here was his problem: it was often easier to imagine himself as someone else.
    He noticed his speed had dipped. It was a two-lane road, curving, with no passing allowed, and five cars crawled behind him, the nearest one flashing its lights. He swallowed and accelerated.
    His car on a side street, Jimmy stood behind the ring of yellow sawhorses while another car groaningly rose, winched upward from the pit, an SUV with a smashed windshield. The news stories hadn't done justice to what had befallen the town—or he'd failed to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. A day after the event, wreckers still labored to lift cars from the sinkholes, three of which he'd passed on the way into town. This hole—scene of the eyewitness account—had consumed nearly half a block in the center of town, a four-lane collapse digging into the sidewalk, taking out in addition the cement under a pizza place awning and the walkway by a barber shop door on the side of the street where he stood. Fat brown pipes, one of which had ruptured, criss-crossed the rift. The sun hung directly overhead.
    At his back, a diner's bell jingled. "That the last one?" The man wore a blue corduroy jacket that couldn't possibly close. His ruddy beard reached nearly to his navel.
    "The last car?"
    "Yeah."
    "It looks to be."
    "That's the one. The Stitch family. Good thing the kids weren't in there. She had just parked and gotten them out."
    I heard two people died."
    "Not here. Beech Street." The man regarded him frankly, and Jimmy saw himself recognized as a stranger. "You came to see this?"
    "Not this. I'm looking for one of the rescuers. I thought I recognized him from the report."
    "What, one of the EMTs?"
    "No. A... stranger." The other man's eyes had gone glassy, and he squeezed his beard