Part 33 (1/2)

The next time she went away, I was old.

I'd married again, once or twice. I even had a son and a daughter, both grown. The stories of Annie Jones I'd told them I now told to my grandchildren. They weren't true stories. The truth I kept locked away inside of me, to look at now and then when I was alone.

In fact, I made a good deal of money writing stories about Annie Jones. Like Annie Jones and the s.p.a.ce Squid. And Annie Jones and the Robots of Doom. And there were others, some of which were made into sensies. If Annie came back, she would find herself a legend, like Joan of Arc, or Buffalo Bill, or Neil Armstrong. I smiled to think of her reaction and hoped I would be out of her reach when she found out.

I still sat at the same table at the bar now run by my daughter and her husband. No longer posing, no longer intriguing, no longer waiting, just remembering and occasionally writing down a tale that had its start in a memory. My hair was white and thinning, and I was smaller than I had been, befitting my smaller life. And sometimes, I admit, satisfied, content, and happy, I fell asleep, nodding in my chair, dreaming dreams I kept to myself.

”Hey!” The voice, next to my head, woke me and almost made me fall backwards out of my chair.

”What have you done to me, old man?”

”Annie?” My eyes weren't as good as they once were, but the woman looming over me had longish black hair, and no tattoo. She was wearing a loose blouse and a short skirt. ”Annie?”

”Yes, Annie, you s...o...b..ring, senile, son of a...”

”What have you done to yourself?”

She stopped and looked at herself. ”What are you talk... Oh, I guess I look a little different than I did the last time you and I... Who gives a s.p.a.cer's s.h.i.+t what the h.e.l.l I look like? What's all this c.r.a.p about Annie Jones and the Wh.o.r.e of Planet X, or whatever it is you've been spewing? Every time I try to pick up a lover or start a fight, people treat me like I wasn't real, like I'm sort kind of story book character come to life. I punched a cop just to see what would happen and she thanked me! Said, wait until she tells her kids that she got punched by Annie Jones. What have you done to me?”

When I was able to speak without letting her catch me laughing, I said, ”I made you famous, that's all. Or, not you, so much as the idea of you.” I risked a chuckle. ”Made a lot of money at it, too.”

”Money?” That calmed her down. ”Well, I suppose if you did it to make money it's all right.” She smiled. ”I remember one time when we convinced the people on some hick world out beyond Andromeda that there was an asteroid coming that would wipe out half the planet. We sold about a thousand pa.s.sages aboard a s.h.i.+p that might have held six or seven people if they didn't mind getting to know each other real well.” A laugh burst from her. ”Then we left two days, or rather nights, before we were scheduled to and left them all behind. I always wondered if they were so relieved we'd lied to them about the asteroid that they didn't mind losing their money.”

She pulled up a chair and we started drinking ale and telling lies. It was almost like going back in time. Almost like being alive. I could pretend that I could keep up with her, that I wasn't tired, that I didn't hope for one more night with her.

Eventually I said, ”How about some food?”

”G.o.d, yes,” she said. ”I'm so hungry I feel like I could take a bite out of a neutron star. Where should we go?” She stood up, pus.h.i.+ng her chair over, ready for whatever came next.

Except for what I suggested. ”How about my place?”

She didn't laugh, which was a relief to me. She did look at me with pity, which made me angry, whether at her or at myself I wasn't sure.

”I have food,” I said, with some heat. ”And I can cook.” She still looked like she wasn't sure how to break it to me that she wasn't anxious to leap into bed with the decrepit husk of what had been a man. ”I just thought you might want a real meal for a change, that's all. I have no dark designs on your virtue, if that's what you're worried about.” I stared at her, daring her to laugh. Which she did, forcing me to join her.

”Come on, then,” she said. ”Let's go and fill our bellies with something other than ale for a while.”

No promises, I told myself, but a perhaps, a maybe, a could be. I didn't even mind that she helped me to my feet. Her touch warmed places that had been cold too long. No promises, I told myself, but a hope, a wish, a prayer.

Before we got to the door, it opened and a group of five, or ten, or a hundred people burst in, laughing, shouting, shoving, shaking the floor like a stampede of wild creatures in their rush to reach the bar. s.p.a.cers and the crowd they accreted as they cruised the port.

”Annie!” they yelled when they saw her. ”Annie Jones!” they trumpeted.

And she answered them. ”Trisha! Sasha! Wen Ho!” And more. She was surrounded and torn from me by the mob, swept away by a wave of old friends and s.h.i.+pmates. I stood and watched them go. Even though they were just a few feet from me, they seemed to recede into the distance until I was alone, a million miles from anyone.

I went back to my table and waited.

There comes a time when old ceases to have meaning and the young become impatient to have you die and get out of the way. When every day you wake up is a miracle, or a curse, and you are never sure which.

I waited, no more pretending to myself. I hung on, day after day after day. I could hear the whispers of grandchildren and great-grandchildren as they wondered if I would ever die. They loved me, I think, but enough was enough. Besides, I still had some money to leave them.

Yet, even though there were no promises, I waited.

And, finally, she came.

”Peter?” she said, leaning over me as I lay in bed. Her voice was strained with the effort of trying to fit her normal shout into a whisper. Her hair was silver this time, the metal, not the color, though she was no longer young. The way she moved, the way she stood, were still filled with confidence, but some of her brashness was gone, as if she'd met a situation or two somewhere in her travels which she hadn't been able to handle all by herself. ”Peter,” she whispered again, a little louder, when I didn't respond. She leaned closer, trying to see if there was life in my eyes, to hear if I still breathed.

I did breathe. I breathed in the scent of her, the scent of a time before I was born and the time to come after I was dead. I smelled crowded s.h.i.+ps visiting a hundred worlds with a thousand taverns. Blood and sweat and s.e.x and fear and joy. I inhaled Annie Jones like a drug.

And when I exhaled, I let it all out.

”You never promised to come back,” I said. ”But you always did. And I never meant to wait for you, but when I wasn't spending my time thinking about the last time, I was hoping there would be a next time.”

”Then you're a fool,” she said, but she stroked my forehead as she said it. ”I'm Annie Jones and I don't care about anyone but me. I'm a traveler through s.p.a.ce and time, and, if sometimes by chance I happen to come back, I always go away.”

”I know who you are, Annie, and I'm glad that you came back. But this time it's me that's going away with no promise to return.” I smiled at her. ”And, unlike you, I mean it.” And I swear I saw a tear fall. And I was happy, not that she was sad, but that, in her way, she loved me.

SCREAM ANGEL.

Douglas Smith

They stopped beating Trelayne when they saw that he enjoyed it. The thugs that pa.s.sed as cops in that town on Long Shot backed away from where he lay curled on the dirt floor, as if he was something dead or dangerous. He watched them lock the door of his cold little cell again. Disgust and something like fear showed in their eyes. The taste of their contempt for him mixed with the sharpness of his own blood in his mouth. And the Scream in that blood shot another stab of pleasure through him.

He expected their reaction. The Merged Corporate Ent.i.ty guarded its secrets well, and Scream was its most precious. Long Shot lay far from any Ent.i.ty project world and well off the jump route linking Earth and the frontier. No one on this backwater planet would know of the drug, let alone have encountered a Screamer or an Angel. That was why he had picked it.

Their footsteps receded, and the outer door of the plasteel storage hut that served as the town jail clanged shut. Alone, he rolled onto his side on the floor, relis.h.i.+ng the agony the movement brought. He tried to recall how he came to be there, but the Scream in him turned each attempt into an emotional sideshow. Finally he remembered something burning, something...

...falling.

It had been one of their better shows.

He remembered now. Remembered last night, standing in the ring of their makes.h.i.+ft circus dome, announcing the performers to an uncaring crowd, crying out the names of the d.a.m.ned, the conquered. Each member of his refugee band emerged from behind torn red curtains and propelled themselves in the manner of their species into or above the ring, depending on their chosen act.

He knew the acts meant little. The crowd came not to see feats of acrobatics or strength, but to gawk at otherworldly strangeness, to watch aliens bow in submission before the mighty human. Trelayne's circus consisted of the remnants of the subjugated races of a score of worlds, victims to the Ent.i.ty's resource extraction or terraforming project: the Stone Puppies, lumbering silica beasts of slate-sided bulk-Guppert the Strong, squat bulbous-limbed refugee from the crus.h.i.+ng gravity and equally crus.h.i.+ng mining exploitation of Mendlos II-Feran the fox-child, his people hunted down like animals on Fandor IV.

And the Angels. Always the Angels.

But curled in the dirt in the cold cell, recalling last night, Trelayne pushed away any thoughts of the Angels. And of her.

Yes, it had been a fine show. Until the Ta'lona died, exploding in blood and brilliance high above the ring, after floating too near a torch. Trelayne had bought the gas bag creature's freedom a week before from an ip slaver, knowing that its species had been nearly wiped out.

As pieces of the fat alien had fallen flaming into the crowd, Trelayne's grip on reality had shattered like a funhouse mirror struck by a hammer. He could now recall only flashes of what had followed last night: people burning-screaming-panic-a stampede to the exits-his arrest.

Nor could he remember doing any Scream. He usually stayed clean before a show. But he knew what he felt now lying in the cell-the joy of the beating, the ecstasy of humiliation. He must have done a hit when the chaos began and the smell of burnt flesh reached him. To escape the horror.