Read Asimov's SF, January 2012 for Free Online

have a good memory. I remember every one of my finds."
    "What did it say? When it spoke to you."
    "Do you think I'm crazy?"
    "I think we're both crazy."
    Rachel was staring out of the windshield at the starlit necropolis. I waited for her to speak. I didn't much care why we here, to be straight with you. Or where we were going. I only knew that I was glad to be there. In that moment. In a stolen pickup that smelled of pizza. A gun digging into the small of my back. The freedom of not knowing what came next.
    At last, Rachel said, “We call them soul stones. We think they're imprinted with some kind of quantum structure that generates eidolons. If you take away every soul stone you can find in a tomb, its population of eidolons is reduced. Not eliminated, so there's something else going on, but definitely reduced."
    "By eidolons you mean I guess the dead. Dead aliens."
    "If that's what eidolons are, yes. But we don't know that. They may be servants, memorializing the dead. Remnants of some kind of ceremony of interment. Representations of particular memories. We impose our stories on things aliens left behind, but we can't ever know the truth. What they really were, what they meant to those who made or owned them, how they were used . . ."
    "But you know that it wants to go back."
    "After we're finished here, we'll be free. We can do anything we like."
    "It'll probably end badly."
    "There's a song on ‘Nebraska.’ You know ‘Nebraska'?"
    "It's the only one of his I really liked. It had a lo-fi emo thing going for it."
    But I was thinking about a different Springsteen song, from a different album.
    Rachel said, “This one is about Charlie Starkweather, who killed a bunch of people to impress his girlfriend. It's a true story. There's a film of it, a good one. The song starts off about the movie version of the real story, and goes beyond both of them. It ends with Charlie on trial, asking the judge if he can have his girlfriend sit on his lap when he's strapped in the electric chair."
    "My dad had this tribute CD. Chrissie Hynde sang that song."
    "I like that version."
    "I like it better than the original,” I said.
    * * * *
    We drove back to the motel. We watched TV. We fucked. There was an edge of desperation to it. We slept. In the morning, we drove to a short strip mall at the southern end of the little town. Bought potato chips and bottles of water and a few other things in a minimart, had breakfast in a diner. Rachel studied every vehicle that came and went in the parking lot. When a van parked in front of the souvenir store that anchored one end of the little strip mall, she told me to drink up my coffee, we had people to see, things to do.
    The van's driver had raised the mesh shutters of the storefront and was unlocking the door when we walked up. A middle-aged overweight guy with pale hair combed sideways over his pate, strands fluttering in hot wind. He smiled at Rachel, asked her if she was working.
    "I found a new partner,” Rachel said.
    "So I see."
    The guy gave me an up-and-down glance. I smiled. The excitement was back. A parched taste in my mouth. A fat lazy hum in my head.
    Rachel patted her bag, told the guy she had something for him.
    "One of your specials?"
    "Definitely."
    "You want the right price, Rach, you know you've come to the right place."
    "Why don't you unlock that door so we can talk inside?"
    What she did when the guy opened the door was follow him inside and shoot him in the back of his head. One shot, all it took. There was hardly any blood: the bullet stayed in his skull. He dropped straight down and she stepped over him and used the butt of her gun to smash the glass top of the counter that ran along one side of the dim and cluttered store.
    "Give me a hand,” she told me. “Scatter things about. Make it look like a robbery."
    "Isn't that what it is?"
    Rachel threw a handful of small white pebbles on the floor, kicked them around, reached in for more. “It's a diversion,” she