Magazine - Asimov's Science Fiction - 2004 - Issue 10 - October (v1.0) [txt] by October (v1.0)

Author:October (v1.0) [txt] [October (v1.0) [txt]]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Copyright (C) 2004 by William Barton.

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CH005 *The Catch* by Kage Baker A Novelette Kage Baker's Hugo- and Nebula-finalist, "The Empress of Mars," appeared in our July 2003 issue. Her next novel, _The Life of the World to Come_, will be out from Tor next month, and continues the adventures of the cyborg operatives of Dr. Zeus Incorporated.

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The barn stands high in the middle of back-country nowhere, shimmering in summer heat. It's an old barn, empty a long time, and its broad planks are silvered. Nothing much around it but yellow hills and red rock. Long ago, somebody painted it with a mural. Still visible along its broad wall are the blobs representing massed crowds, the green diamond of a baseball park, and the primitive-heroic figure of an outfielder leaping, glove raised high. His cartoon eyes are wide and happy. The ball, radiating black lines of force, is sailing into his glove. Above him is painted the legend: _WHAT A CATCH! _And, in smaller letters below it: _1951, The Golden Year!_ The old highway snakes just below the barn, where once the mural must have edified a long cavalcade of DeSotos, Packards, and Oldsmobiles. But the old road is white and empty now, with thistles pushing through its cracks. The new highway runs straight across the plain below. Down on the new highway, eighteen-wheeler rigs hurtle through, roaring like locomotives, and they are the only things to disturb the vast silence. The circling hawk makes no sound. The cottonwood trees by the edge of the dry stream are silent, too, not a rustle or a creak along the whole row; but they do cast a thin gray shade, and the men waiting in the Volkswagen Bug are grateful for that. They might be two cops on stakeout. They aren't. Not exactly. * * * * "Are you going to tell me why we're sitting here, now?" asks the younger man, finishing his candy bar. His name is Clete. The older man's name is Porfirio. The older man shifts in his seat and looks askance at his partner. He doesn't approve of getting stoned on the job. But he shrugs, checks his weapon, settles into the most comfortable position he can find. He points through the dusty windshield at the barn. "See up there? June 30, 1958, family of five killed. '46 Plymouth Club Coupe. Driver lost control of the car and went off the edge of the road. Car rolled seventy meters down that hill and hit the rocks, right there. Gas tank blew. Mr. and Mrs. William T. Ross of Visalia, California, identified from dental records. Kids didn't have any dental records. No relatives to identify bodies. "Articles in the local and Visalia papers, grave with the whole family's names and dates on one marker in a cemetery in Visalia. Some blackening on the rocks up there. That's all there is to show it ever happened." "Okay," says the younger man, nodding thoughtfully. "No witnesses, right?" "That's right.

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