Read Asimov's SF, January 2012 for Free Online Page B

jumped out at her, she pushed through and scrambled down the ramp. I followed her into a square dry space. Blocks of stone fallen from the vaulted ceiling tipped here and there on gritty black sand. Shadows shifted around us as Rachel pointed the flashlight here and there. Some of them kept moving after the beam of light had passed. Small figures emerging from angles and cracks in the stone-block walls, about the size of spider monkeys I'd seen at the Milwaukee zoo, one of Dad's less inspired post-divorce outings.
    With a sound like whispering in a far-off room, the eidolons stepped toward us. Nudging each other, twisting their hands together. They were as pale as cigarette smoke. Bands of tiny black eyes set above sphincter-like mouths turned to Rachel as she walked queen-like among them. Watching as she took out the soul stone and set it on the floor. When she stepped back, the eidolons flocked around the stone, pawing at it but never quite touching it.
    There seemed to be more of them, suddenly, but it was hard to tell because they crowded so close together, wavering in and out of each other, faintly luminescent. I thought of cats, feeding.
    "That's it,” Rachel said. Her voice flat and small in that vaulted space.
    "That's it? What about the stuff ? The alien treasure?"
    "It's somewhere else. Really."
    We stood looking at each other, half-lit by the splash of the flashlight's beam.
    I said, “I just want to be with you. You and me against the world. But no more stories about treasure. Okay?"
    "We're nearly at the end of this story,” Rachel said. She had that dreamy look again, but she spoke with clear certainty. “The stone is back where it wants to be."
    "So we can go."
    "Yes. We can go."
    We were about halfway around the spiral of the labyrinth when Rachel pointed at the sliver of dark sky pinched between the walls. I looked up, and that's when she cold-cocked me. Hit me behind the ear with a solid blow from her flashlight, caught me on top of my head when I went down. I heard her say something. I'd like to think it was an apology. I heard her footsteps crunch on sand and grit, moving away. And that's all I knew for a while.
    * * * *
    The man paused. He sat on the bunk bed that hinged out from one wall of the small death-row cell. He wore orange coveralls and his head was shaven and his stubble was dark against his pale skin. He told the alien, “I guess you know the rest."
    "I am interested in every part of your story,” the !Cha said.
    His tank squatted low against the opposite wall, overtopped by the joints of its spindly legs. Fluorescent lights caged in the steel ceiling and in the steel walls picked highlights from the tank's black cylinder. There were no shadows anywhere, apart from a small one crouched under the bunk bed.
    "It isn't really my story. It's hers. I was there, I went along, I did what I did. I never denied that. Never cared not to. I did what I did,” the man said, with a sudden jut of defiance. “I shot that old guy. The guard. And I was responsible for the kid dying. When we left them, we meant for both of them to get free, but I hit him too hard. He was bleeding inside his skull. Went into a coma and never came out of it. So that's on me too. And I was there when she did her killing too, and never tried to stop her."
    "And yet you are here, and she is not."
    "I told you I'd tell you my story if I could ask a couple of questions. Here's the first. Your friend, Useless Beauty. He put her up to it, didn't he?"
    "He is not a friend."
    "You could be him. Those tanks all look the same . . . All you have to do is call yourself something else. Unlikely Worlds, say. Who would know?"
    "I call myself Unlikely Worlds because that is the name I took when I came here. Useless Beauty is my rival. We compete for the same things."
    "Whatever. He did a number on Rachel, didn't he?"
    "No. The story was already inside her. The soul stone found it and made use of it."
    "Right. You just like to