Loosed Upon the World Page 13

  “And now you’ve released it in the wild?”

  The professor looked up again, his mouth closed firmly to resist the temptation of sticking out his tongue and tasting bacteria from another geological age.

  “Whose fault is that?” Paul asked. “Don’t worry; there’s some left for further study, but I cultured enough to leave a flask with Francine. We agreed that she could use a drone to seed any likely cloud mass if it seemed necessary.”

  “That wasn’t very ethical,” the Old Man said, eyes downcast.

  “But it may save our lives until we can report the sabotage to authorities.”

  The professor nodded, any further comment cut off by the roar of the helicopter landing at the far end of the terrace. Paul knew that he would soon work out the other implications of the discovery. The new bacteria heralded a wave of other discoveries that might help with humanity’s adaptation to a warmer world. Might even help to control warming, if that wasn’t too much to hope for.

  Old Man Hall headed for the craft, walking stiffly. Paul followed, but he didn’t make it all the way. The helicopter’s pilot had jumped out in the snow and she ran to meet him. It was Francine.

  She threw her arms around him, hugged him, and kissed him. When they stopped to breathe again, he smiled and asked, “Francine Pomerleau, what are you doing?”

  “The only thing possible under the circumstances. You’ve forced me to ask a question that I don’t know the answer to. What would I do without my guy from northern Ontario?”

  * * *

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born in Toronto, JEAN-LOUIS TRUDEL now lives in Québec City, Canada. He holds degrees in physics, astronomy, and the history of science, capping his education with a doctorate in history. Jean-Louis now teaches history part-time at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of twenty-eight books in French, including novels, collections, and YA fiction, one anthology in English (Tesseracts7), and more than one hundred short stories in French and English. His publications have won him several Prix Aurora Awards. He also writes with Yves Meynard under the name Laurent McAllister, accounting for five more books and a handful of short stories. Their 2009 novel Suprématie won plaudits, nominations, and Canada’s top science fiction awards.

  THE RAINY SEASON

  TOBIAS S. BUCKELL

  Elaine grabbed her duffel bag and wrestled it down from the overhead rack, and looked out the windows of her stopped train at the new station’s winglike roofs curving overhead. She didn’t recognize any of the waiting faces in the Encinitas terminal, though it was hard to tell by just the eyes. So many people wore surgical masks.

  Which reminded her. She pulled hers on. The air was slightly hazy today.

  She wondered idly if she should consider a full respirator. Back in Michigan, Kenneth certainly seemed to consider it a good idea. “You can’t risk breathing in that coastal air,” he said. “Who knows what’s in it?”

  “Only tourists wear full respirators,” she’d protested.

  “You’re not that different,” Kenneth said. “You don’t live there anymore. You haven’t for a very long time.”

  Fair enough. Still. People wearing full respirators were something to chuckle at. Out-of-towners. She’d be inside soon enough, Elaine thought. And stepped out of the train into the bright sun.

  A few minutes of meandering around the slowly thinning crowd, and she realized that no one would be there to pick her up as promised. She relented and got into a cab.

  She should have known better than to trust that Beverly and Jackson would actually pick her up as promised. Welcome home, Elaine, she thought.

  * * * *

  Everything had changed. That she expected, but it still hit her. When you lived somewhere, you slowly saw the raw physical nature of the world shift. A building here or there. Starts scattered across locations.

  But when you came back to somewhere you lived after an absence, it all happened at once. Your brain had to process and work hard to update that model of realness minute after minute as you looked around and saw change after change. The place wasn’t the same. The place you lived no longer existed. In the same geographical location is a new place, with some traces of the things that you used to consider that location still surviving.

  And there was no driver up front to ask questions like “what happened to the chicken place that used to be on this corner?”

  Well, that was a stupid question, wasn’t it? It was gone. It didn’t matter anymore. She hadn’t been there to see it go. It didn’t care that she cared that it was gone. And probably neither did anyone else.

  She stopped trying to catalogue the differences, to expect certain signs and buildings at certain points. This was a new city. This wasn’t really coming back; this was arriving for the first time. She was different. Encinitas was different.

  Deal with it, she told herself.

  As the car drove itself down the 101, winding along the coast, she caught glimpses of people laid out on the beach, their faces hidden behind bug-like gas masks. It was like an invasion of the rubbery sea-people, Elaine thought to herself.

  It had all been perfectly normal to her once.

  * * * *

  Beverly and Jackson stared at her when they opened the door. Their eyes had a dull haze to them as they just stared at her, reaching for some memory.

  “Hello?” Elaine prompted.

  The words were a spark to their fuel. They suddenly moved into action. “When did you get in?” Beverly asked.

  “You came?” Jackson said, nodding his head slowly in that bird-like way Elaine had always hated.

  “Of course I fucking came,” Elaine snapped.

  Beverly stepped between the two of them. Ostensibly to grab the canvas duffel bag Elaine shouldered. But it was a shielding move. “It’s an honest question,” Beverly muttered. “It’s been six years. We haven’t seen you in six years.”

  “I sent an email,” Elaine said. “I sent texts. I explained I’d be taking the train up from San Diego after flying in.”

  Jackson scratched at bleach-blond hair and looked pained. “Email?”

  “Jackson isn’t good at checking that stuff; you know that,” Beverly said, a hint of accusation in her tone.

  “I sent you a message,” Elaine said.

  Beverly bit her lip. “It’s not a good time right now, and a lot of people sent me messages. I’m sorry we weren’t there to pick you up.”

  They locked eyes for a second. And Elaine decided a fight over not being picked up would get them nowhere. We’re all adults here, she thought. All on the edge. Elaine stepped over plastic toys and metal cars as Beverly shuffled her in and quickly closed the door.

  “We weren’t expecting you. Tomorrow we can put together the bunks for the kids; they’re already in bed, though. I don’t want to wake them up. Unless you want to sleep in . . .”

  Elaine shook her head and looked down the tiny hallway. “No,” she said quickly. “No. The couch is fine.”

  She’d left home in the silent, groggy morning hours. Crisp fall air and the smell of coffee. Quiet kisses goodbye and feeling of . . . something like a reddened, dead leaf spinning slowly as it wafted to the ground. She’d been balled up tight inside for the whole trip, getting tenser as she got closer to the coast.

  Now she was a spring-tight wad of self-control as she put her bag down next to the couch. “I could get a room. At a hotel.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Beverly snapped. “I’m sorry we weren’t ready for you. I’m sorry we don’t have a room yet. I can go get the kids up . . .”

  “Bev!” Jackson pleaded. “Bev.”

  Elaine sank onto the couch. “The couch is fine. I’ve been in cramped seats all day. It’s just fine. I just need to wash my face.”

  Beverly hovered over the couch, and then banked off toward the kitchen to angrily clean up. Through the cutout in the wall Elaine saw several carefully wrapped casseroles and lots of other plastic dishes. Offerings from neighbors. Food to get you
through a hard time.

  The house reeked of melted cheese and pasta.

  In the toothpaste- and hard-soap-encrusted bathroom, Elaine pushed aside shaving cream and cologne to perch her old leather travel bag on the marble sink top so she could wash her face and brush her teeth.

  She looked in the mirror, past her flyaway hair and to the room on the other side of the hall. The door was open. An old plastic rocking chair anxiously leaned forward in the late evening light. Elaine stared at it until she realized she’d stopped brushing her teeth.

  That absence. The lack of something in the house. It kept pricking the back of her neck.

  An empty rocking chair.

  * * * *

  One of her favorite spots had always been the deck. They were close to the edge of the state park, and everything had been built up around them. The richer folk carving elaborate space out so they could have their ocean views. But their ancient little beach house creaked on.

  If you looked straight ahead and paid no attention to the noise, it was you, the rocks, and then ocean going on for ever and ever.

  The sun glinted over the gray surface, and Elaine scratched at the edge of her gas mask, then slipped it up to sip coffee.

  Jackson joined her, slipping in right next to her. “Didn’t think you’d be up this early,” he said. “Jet lag and all.”

  “The couch is shit for sleeping on,” Elaine said. “My back is twisted. I barely slept.”

  “She’ll get you in a real bed tomorrow.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Elaine sighed, the sound louder than it needed to be, thanks to the mask. “It isn’t important.”

  Jackson nodded. “She’s real angry.”

  “I know. Six years. I’m sorry. It just . . . It wasn’t easy. I never fit. I forgot to call. And then it felt like it would be awkward if I did. And then it got easy to not call. Because I wasn’t here. And I didn’t have to.”

  “That’s not why she’s angry,” Jackson said softly.

  Elaine heard something in his voice that signaled that she needed to pay attention. Jackson had always been more in tune with Bev. If he felt like he needed to say something, she should listen.

  “It’s the will,” Jackson said.

  “What about it?”

  He rubbed his forehead, tapped his feet. Avoided her eyes. “You didn’t come back because of the will?”

  “I haven’t seen the will. Damn, Jackson, I haven’t even thought about the will.” Elaine put the coffee down on the deck.

  “Never even wondered about the beach house?” Jackson looked around.

  “Figured it was Bev and you. You moved in with him.” It made sense to her. And after she’d legged it for the Midwest, she figured she’d all but divorced her own family. They’d raised her. But they weren’t really blood. She hadn’t expected anything.

  Jackson shook his head and looked down between the slats of wood at the sandy ground below. “Nah.” He snorted. “The old man left it all to you, Elaine.”

  Elaine suddenly felt like she’d had the world yanked out from underneath. “The fuck?”

  “All that’s left is the house and a few dollars in savings. But he left it all to you.”

  She stared at Jackson. “Why?”

  He shrugged bony shoulders. “Figured you to be the more mature one. Will says you get to decide what’s done. Think he was never really happy about the fact that we both had to move back in.”

  Elaine pulled her knees up to her chin. She didn’t want to have to think about what happened with the house. Or what to do. Or what was fair. “Bev isn’t mad; she’s scared,” she whispered.

  Jackson said nothing.

  The door to the deck slid open with a loud thunk. Bev stood in the frame, one of her sons in one arm half dressed in black, a clip-on bowtie dangling from his neck. “Are you my aunt?” he asked loudly.

  “We don’t have much time,” Bev said. “Hannes says the storm’s going to hit soon. We need to get to the lagoon or it’ll be canceled.”

  Elaine stared for a moment at the formal tux on her nephew and struggled to remember the five-year-old’s name.

  Wow. She’d really yanked the string and bugged out, hadn’t she? No standing bridges left.

  Alec, she thought. His name was Alec.

  “Wear something nice,” Bev warned them both before retreating back inside.

  Elaine looked out to the ocean and saw darkness on the edge of the horizon. She hadn’t bothered to check the weather report.

  * * * *

  The edge of the storm hit in the middle of the ceremony. Three men in their seventies had turned up to pay their respects, wearing bright floral shirts and baggy pants. They stepped forward and fondly remembered out loud the old days and surfing off the coast. Late nights on the beach. Driving up and down the coast.

  Offshore fishing.

  It was a litany of familiarity.

  And before Beverly, Jackson, or Elaine could step forward, it began to rain. Elaine pulled the mask out of her purse and fastened it over her face. Jackson looked up at the clouds and stuck out his tongue.

  Beverly slapped his hand. “Empty the ashes, Jackson. We need to leave. Alex, do not imitate your uncle.”

  Alex. Of course. I’d been one letter off.

  “Shouldn’t we . . .” Jackson waved a hand around. “You know? Say something?”

  Beverly looked at the clouds. “We need to leave. It’s going to get bad.”

  The rain thickened. The old men trundled off, slapping each other on the back. I pushed the mask hard against my nose for a better seal.

  “Good-bye, dad,” Jackson said, and began to scatter his ashes.

  The rain spread his remains into the mud.

  I had no idea if this was what he had wanted, but I wasn’t going to ask or second-guess. I stood and thought about the emptiness in the house, and tried to engage with the fact that he just wasn’t here anymore.

  We did stand in silence for a bit and then returned to the car.

  As everyone piled back in, I pulled my mask off and stood behind Beverly. “Bev?”

  She turned around. The rain plastered her carefully styled hair flat to her forehead. I shivered. I’d run away from this intensity. But standing in front of her, I wanted to reach forward and dive back in. Build that bridge.

  No no no, shut up, leave it alone, shouted another dwindling voice further inside me.

  I blinked. “I didn’t know about the will,” I said. “I didn’t want to cause trouble.”

  “You didn’t know?” Beverly looked incredulous.

  “Not until Jackson told me.”

  “He didn’t talk to you? You two didn’t plan this?”

  I stepped back. “Why would I plan this? What is this?”

  “You know.”

  “No, Bev, I don’t. I don’t know.” I was breathing heavily now, my face streaming wet with rain. The words flowed. “So why don’t you tell me?”

  Her lips curled slightly. “It’s even worse, then. If you never talked. He just died, never hearing again from you. And still he did this. Left you the house. And you can’t even appreciate it.”

  “I didn’t want it.” Elaine stepped closer. “I swear.”

  “You should want it,” Bev said. “Because it is the family’s. The house has been in the family for four generations now. But you could care less. Because you aren’t really a part of the family. You don’t want it or us. You found out you were adopted, and since then, you didn’t want jack shit to do with us. You don’t even want the greatest gift our father could give any of us.”

  The rain smelled sharp. Chemical sharp.

  Pull it in, Elaine urged herself. Take control, mollify her, and get in the damn car. But in the rain, she could see the outline of Bev’s attitude. She could read that her body language signaled “ungrateful bitch” in bright red.

  And as prickly as she was, Elaine usually stepped back from the cliff. Usually walked away.

  Or even ran away entirely
from it all.

  She stepped forward. “Maybe,” she gritted. “Maybe he gave it to me because he didn’t think his own daughter could keep it together enough to make the right call. Between both of you moving back in with him, he had time to get a real close read on you both, right?”

  Bev’s eyes widened and she slapped Elaine.

  They both stood and stared at each other.

  Then Bev got in the car and shut the door. “Maybe you’re right,” she shouted from inside. “So why don’t you get your own damn ride back to the house.”

  Elaine’s mouth was half open, cheek still stinging.

  Jackson was in the back with the kids, and he had a “what the fuck?” expression on his face. He slid the window down as Bev started to pull away. “You’re tripping, Elaine!”

  “I know,” Elaine said, still stunned by what she’d said. Sure, she’d thought things like that. Unvoiced suspicions, old family wounds. Festering.

  Jackson threw her gas mask out of the window at her. “The rain, idiot. You’re tripping.”

  They shot away, bouncing over the dirt road, headed back toward asphalt. Elaine leaned over and picked up the mask. It had broken against a rock.

  “Shit,” she whispered, feeling a bit dizzy from the fumes around her. Shit. What pyschotropics were falling out of the sky today? What was she inhaling? Something that had dropped her barriers to saying what was on her mind.

  Shit.

  “This is why I left,” she shouted at the darkening sky. She looked back toward the muddy spot where they’d scattered the ashes, and then stumbled back toward it. “I didn’t deserve the slap. But I think I needed to be yelled at. That wasn’t very nice of me.”

  Oh, Dad, she thought, looking down at the ground. But you’d know that. He hadn’t slapped her after she’d come in from a heavy storm, high out of her mind because she was local and wouldn’t be bothered to wear a mask. She’d laid it all out there. Called him a deadbeat loser surfer who’d been lucky enough to be given a house so he could burn out slowly by the beach.