crowd still thinks this is part of the set, and they love it.
12
No good-byes. I know I’m canned. When I go into the Denver Alpertron office in another day and a half to pick up my final check, some subordinate I’ve never seen before gives me the envelope.
“Thanks,” I say. He stares at me and says nothing.
I turn to leave and meet Stella in the hall. The top of her head comes only to my shoulders, and so she has to tilt her face up to glare at me. She says, “You’re not going to be working for any promoter in the business. New York says so.”
“Fine,” I say. I walk past her.
Before I reach the door, she stops me by saying, “The initial report is in already.”
I turn. “And?”
“The verdict will probably end up accidental death. Everybody’s bonded. Jain was insured for millions. Everything will turn out all right for everyone.” She stares at me for several seconds. “Except Jain. You bastard.”
We have our congruencies.
The package comes later, along with a stiff legal letter from a firm of attorneys. The substance of the message is this: “Jain Snow wished you to have possession of this. She informed you prior to her demise of her desires; please carry them out accordingly.” The package contains a chrome cylinder with a screw cap. The cylinder contains ashes; ashes and a few bone fragments. I check. Jain’s ashes, unclaimed by father, friends, or employer.
I drive West, away from the soiled towers of the strip-city. I drive beyond the coal strip pits and into the mountains until the paved highway becomes narrow asphalt and then rutted earth and then only a trace, and the car can go no further. With the metal cylinder in one hand I flee on foot until I no longer hear sounds of city or human beings.
At last the trees end and I climb over bare mountain grades. I rest briefly when the pain in my lungs is too sharp. to ignore. At last I reach the summit.
I scatter Jain’s ashes on the wind.
Then I hurl the empty cylinder down toward the timberline; it rolls and clatters and finally is only a distant glitter on the talus slope.
“Jain!” I scream at the sky until my voice is gone and vertigo destroys my balance. The echoes die. As Jain died.
I lie down unpeacefully—exhausted—and sleep, and my dreams are of weathered stone. And I awake empty.
Edward Bryant has had more than a dozen books published as well as numerous short stories. This story, “Stone,” garnered Bryant a Hugo nomination and the first of his two Nebula Awards. Of it, and music, he writes: “Long, long ago, on a highway far away, I was roadtripping to the east and woke up in an Interstate rest area just outside Des Moines, Iowa. I rolled down the window to Midwestern mugginess and flipped on the radio. An AM station was playing a Janis Joplin set. I’d loved her from her albums and had seen her live at the Family Dog in Denver. Damn. ‘Stone’ pretty much came to me whole cloth. Me, I’m no musician. But I love to use music in my stories. If I weren’t a writer, I’d love to be a musician—professional or amateur. At this moment I’m trying to compose a symphony, a giant retrospective of my short fiction for Arkham House.”
Mercenary
Lawrence C. Connolly
I got lost on my way home from a failed audition, took a bad turn near the East End, and wound up in a district of dark streets and derelict buildings. It was the last place you’d expect to find traffic, but suddenly there it was, closing in around me, streaming from all directions until I was bumper to bumper on a congested backstreet.
A biker roared past me, advanced a little ways ahead, then stopped to light a cigarette as the traffic crawled past her.
I rolled down my window, called to her. “Hey? Where’s everyone headed?”
She had this black thing going: jacket, eyes, gages—all jet black. Only a streak of silver in her tied-back hair and the pale skin of her face broke the gloom. And there was something alluring about her, and something faintly familiar in her voice as she said: “What? You lost?”
“Yeah. Looks that way.”
Ahead of us, the traffic inched forward. Behind, horns blared.
She ignored them. “So you’re not here for the show?”
“What show?”
“Bobbie Quicksilver. Heard of him?”
“No.”
“Well, now you have. Come on.” She put the bike in gear. “There’s a spot up ahead.”