Her Husband's Hands and Other Stories Read online

  HER HUSBAND’S HANDS

  AND OTHER STORIES

  ADAM-TROY CASTRO

  Copyright © 2014 by Adam-Troy Castro.

  Hand stock photo by Deceptico, DeviantArt.com

  Nanobot stock photo by Vladislav Ociacia,

  ociacia.com, istockphoto.com

  Cover design by Sherin Nicole.

  Ebook designed by Neil Clarke.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-432-4 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-408-9 (trade paperback)

  PRIME BOOKS

  www.prime-books.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact Prime Books at [email protected].

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by David Gerrold

  Arvies

  Her Husband’s Hands

  Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs

  Our Human

  Cherub

  The Shallow End of the Pool

  Pieces of Ethan

  The Boy and the Box

  Extro: “Bad People Doing Evil Things”

  Introduction

  Back in 1968, I met one of my favorite people—Robert Bloch.

  Yes, I know, this is supposed to be an introduction to Adam-Troy Castro’s collection of stories. I’ll get there, I promise. But first I want to talk about Robert Bloch.

  Bloch is mostly known as the author of Psycho. He is also known for saying that he has the heart of a ten year old boy—in a jar on his desk.

  But I remember Bloch as just an all-round good guy. He was one of the funniest and most charming men in the science fiction community, often in demand as a speaker and toastmaster at conventions. One of his best lines came from his sale of Psycho to Alfred Hitchcock—actually, not Hitchcock, but to a dummy company Hitch had set up so he wouldn’t have to pay as much for the movie rights if his name were attached.

  According to the story, Bloch only received $750 from that dummy company. So Robert Bloch went on to claim that he was the forerunner of the gay liberation movement, because he was the first man screwed by Alfred Hitchcock. (This is a joke I have since purloined and used with another producer’s name inserted.)

  But the reason I mention Bloch is because of another joke he once told from the podium. He said he was passing a room where he heard two male voices talking, one saying, “I’ll put yours in mine if you’ll put mine in yours.” He assumed it was a gay liaison, but when he opened the door it was only two authors assembling anthologies, agreeing to publish each other’s stories. (This was during the 70’s, a time when many SF authors were also editing anthologies. I did five myself.)

  That joke came immediately to mind when I sat down to type this introduction. Because Adam-Troy Castro and I are trading introductions. He wrote a generous introduction to my story collection, In the Deadlands, from BenBella Books, available on Amazon, and in return I am writing an introduction to this story collection. I’ll put his in mine and he’ll put mine in his. Robert Bloch can snicker all he wants, I’m still not taking a shower with him.

  Let me step away from the homoerotic references and recontextualize all of the above as literary back-scratching (with everyone keeping their clothes on) and leap ahead to the subject at hand.

  Adam-Troy Castro is a cherished friend. This in itself is remarkable because I am well-known as a cantankerous, reclusive, grumpy old curmudgeon. But Adam-Troy is one of the few people who can tell me that I’m full of shit and still remain a cherished friend, because when he says it, he’s not only right—he’s insightful.

  (In 1995 at the Nebula Awards Banquet, held in some posh hotel in New York City, I was attempting to be modest, while holding a Nebula award under my arm. It is not possible to be modest with a Nebula trophy under your arm. Adam-Troy Castro stopped me from digging my big toe in the sand and saying, ‘Aw, shucks,’ and told me I was full of shit. He was right. I do not know how to savor a moment of acknowledgment. Fortunately, that kind of embarrassment does not happen often, so I haven’t had to learn. But the important part of that story is that he was right.)

  Since then, Adam and I have had few more occasions to break bread together—most memorably that marvelous Brazilian restaurant in Las Vegas, the one where the waiters continued slicing huge slabs of various animals onto our plates until I had to pull a sidearm to stop them because my gut had become so distended I feared my ability to stand might be permanently impaired—but Adam and his wife Judi remain two of the most charming dinner companions this side of Paul DeFilippo and Deb. (This is shameless name-dropping on my part, but it’s still true.)

  Much more relevant is that Adam-Troy and I engage in almost daily exchanges online, often on Facebook, sometimes in private messages or emails, and once even by phone, I think. Usually, these conversations are serious, rigorous, and important enough to slow down and pay serious attention.

  You really have to like someone to put up with them on a daily basis. Especially if you’re not related to them. But this kind of mutual affection is something that feels unique to the community of science fiction writers. At least, in my not-too humble opinion.

  In most other environments, particularly television and movies, writers often behave like bitchy little girls or FBI agents. The highest compliment any Hollywood writer can give any other is healthy disrespect. From there it’s all downhill. The rest is a demonstration of backstabbing, frontstabbing, malicious name-calling, and lies. (Well, all writers are liars—the good ones get paid for it.) Hollywood writers will repeat the most abhorrible career-killing stories about other writers, all in pursuit of the illusory staff job or possible script assignment.

  Try this experiment. Next time you’re having lunch in any restaurant within shouting distance of a studio, ask your waiter how the screenplay is coming along. This will give you some idea of the level of desperation in that particular job market.

  Contrast this with the science fiction community.

  This is my experience. SF and fantasy writers not only respect each other, they admire each other. Get a group of these authors together and within fifteen minutes they’ll be listing the writers who influenced them, the books they loved growing up, and the things they’ve learned from each other. Introduce two writers to each other at a convention and you’re likely to hear simultaneous cries of, “I loved your book—” I am not making this up. I’ve been in the center of this transaction more times than I can remember, once even with a Pulitzer Prize winner. It’s weird and embarrassing and joyous.

  But even beyond that, even if a writer has not been able to keep up with the torrent of new novels pouring out of several thousand computers every month, science fiction and fantasy writers tend to have a genuine respect for each other—because only they know how hard it really is.

  Take any other genre—romance, history, horror, detective, western, whatever—and the rules are already in place. The milieu is established, the resources for research are readily available, the format is understandable.

  Not so, science fiction.

  Science fiction requires world-building. Everything. It requires a level of research beyond anything required by any other genre. It demands the mutual skills of extrapolation and speculation. It demands awareness of sociology, anthropology, psychology, as well—because you’re not only creating an environment, you’re predicting how human beings will live and act and react to each other within that environment. And . . . the hardest part of all, it has to be believable. The author has to believe in it before the reader can.

  The reason there are so many bad scie
nce fiction movies, TV shows, novels, and stories is that science fiction is hard—it’s not about eye-candy, it’s not about special effects, it’s not about techno-babble, it’s about that strange and terrible place where human beings are fundamentally challenged by the possibilities of the world that the author has constructed around them. This is what (most) science fiction writers know about themselves and each other—that any author who has that kind of grasp on the genre well enough to turn out a consistently competent effort is worthy of serious respect.

  And that brings me—finally—to Adam-Troy Castro.

  As I said above, we’re friends. As I said above, we’re trading introductions. But putting both of those things aside, it’s still a privilege to write an introduction to this collection of stories—because Adam-Troy Castro is a damn good writer.

  Actually, I need to be more specific than that. This man’s virtues as a storyteller are considerable.

  First, his sentences are easy to read.

  This is one of the highest pieces of praise I can give to any writer. The true test of a writer’s skill with language is to read his paragraphs aloud. If they flow easily from the tongue, they will flow easily in your mind as you read.

  More than that, Adam-Troy Castro tells his stories with a seeming minimum of effort. He does not engage in gaudy constructions or labored trowelings of adjectives and metaphors. Instead, he lets the story grow as if it is occurring in front of your eyes. He glides through the narrative, creating magic with the simplest of tools, demonstrating the kind of linguistic muscle memory that only comes from ten thousand hours of sitting at the keyboard, paying meticulous attention to the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, and the way they all fit together—doing the authorial equivalent of “wax on, wax off.”

  In other words, Adam-Troy Castro sweats blood to make it look effortless. The result is a clean clear voice. Readable. Evocative. (And the rotten bastard makes it look easy!)

  Why is this important? Because if the reader has to stop and decode the sentence he’s not in the story, he’s trapped in the writing. The job of the writer is to evoke the story so vividly that the reader forgets he’s reading and rides the roller coaster as fast as he can, eagerly turning pages (or tapping the side of his ebook reader’s screen) to find out what happens next.

  But no matter how skillful any author might be at constructing sentences, he also has to make you believe in the story, and this is where Adam-Troy Castro really shines.

  That’s the second point.

  You believe in the story because his characters believe in it. They are not standard issue archetypes dropped into their situations as much as they are grown from the worlds they inhabit.

  His characters are genuine. They have histories. They have passions, fears, desires, and sorrows. They have feelings, they can hurt. As a writer, he cares about the people in his stories as if they are friends, family, acquaintances, enemies—and because Adam-Troy Castro cares, the reader cares too. Dip into any of these stories and as the characters come to life for you, you will care about them too.

  That in itself should establish this man as a writer well worth your attention.

  But his skill with language and character are merely the foundations on which he builds.

  Adam-Troy Castro has something worthwhile to say in every story. He’s using his stories to illuminate and explore the subtext of our world. He’s commenting on the terrible traps that humanity has stumbled into, the things we do to each other, and the ethical dilemmas that bind us.

  Adam-Troy Castro tells stories that disturb.

  That’s why he’s worth reading. The status quo is the enemy. The writer’s job is to be subversive, to awaken the reader, to annoy the reader, to make the reader uncomfortable, to stamp the reader with an indelible experience that will change the way he looks at the universe from that moment on. Adam-Troy Castro does that.

  Dip into this collection with caution. Do not try to assimilate it all in one read. Notice the spread. Notice the dynamic range. These are thought-grenades. They are time-bombs shoved down your throat. They will lurk in your gut and explode at all the wrong moments.

  Pay attention, dear reader. This man is doing what writers are supposed to do.

  He’s making a difference.

  —David Gerrold

  Arvies

  STATEMENT OF INTENT

  This is the story of a mother, and a daughter, and the right to life, and the dignity of all living things, and of some souls granted great destinies at the moment of their conception, and of others damned to remain society’s useful idiots.

  CONTENTS

  Expect cute plush animals and amniotic fluid and a more or less happy ending for everybody, though the definition of happiness may depend on the truncated emotional capacity of those unable to feel anything else. Some of the characters are rich and famous, others are underage, and one is legally dead, though you may like her the most of all.

  APPEARANCE

  We first encounter Molly June on her fifteenth deathday, when the monitors in charge of deciding such things declare her safe for passengers. Congratulating her on completing the only important stage of her development, they truck her in a padded skimmer to the arvie showroom where she is claimed, right away, by one of the Living.

  The fast sale surprises nobody, not the servos that trained her into her current state of health and attractiveness, not the AI routines managing the showroom, and least of all Molly June, who has spent her infancy and early childhood having the ability to feel surprise, or anything beyond a vague contentment, scrubbed from her emotional palate. Crying, she’d learned while still capable of such things, brought punishment, while unconditional acceptance of anything the engineers saw fit to provide brought light and flower scent and warmth. By this point in her existence she’ll greet anything short of an exploding bomb with no reaction deeper than vague concern. Her sale is a minor development by comparison: a happy development, reinforcing her feelings of dull satisfaction. Don’t feel sorry for her. Her entire life, or more accurately death, is happy ending. All she has to do is spend the rest of it carrying a passenger.

  VEHICLE SPECIFICATIONS

  You think you need to know what Molly June looks like. You really don’t, as it plays no role in her life. But as the information will assist you in feeling empathy for her, we will oblige anyway.

  Molly June is a round-faced, button-nosed gamin, with pink lips and cheeks marked with permanent rose: her blonde hair framing her perfect face in parentheses of bouncy, luxurious curls. Her blue eyes, enlarged by years of genetic manipulation and corrective surgeries, are three times as large as the ones imperfect nature would have set in her face. Lemur-like, they dominate her features like a pair of pacific jewels, all moist and sad and adorable. They reveal none of her essential personality, which is not a great loss, as she’s never been permitted to develop one.

  Her body is another matter. It has been trained to perfection, with the kind of punishing daily regimen that can only be endured when the mind itself remains unaware of pain or exhaustion. She has worked with torn ligaments, with shattered joints, with disfiguring wounds. She has severed her spine and crushed her skull and has had both replaced, with the same ease her engineers have used, fourteen times, to replace her skin with a fresh version unmarked by scars or blemishes. What remains of her now is a wan amalgam of her own best-developed parts, most of them entirely natural, except for her womb, which is of course a plush, wired palace, far safer for its future occupant than the envelope of mere flesh would have provided. It can survive injuries capable of reducing Molly June to a smear.

  In short, she is precisely what she should be, now that she’s fifteen years past birth, and therefore, by all standards known to modern civilized society, Dead.

  HEROINE

  Jennifer Axioma-Singh has never been born and is therefore a significant distance away from being Dead.

  She is, in every way, entirely typical. She has written operas, clim
bed mountains, enjoyed daredevil plunges from the upper atmosphere into vessels the size of teacups, finagled controlling stock in seventeen major multinationals, earned the hopeless devotion of any number of lovers, written her name in the sands of time, fought campaigns in a hundred conceptual wars, survived twenty regime changes, and on three occasions had herself turned off so she could spend a year or two mulling the purpose of existence while her bloodstream spiced her insights with all the most fashionable hallucinogens.

  She has accomplished all of this from within various baths of amniotic fluid.

  Jennifer has yet to even open her eyes, which have never been allowed to fully develop past the first trimester and which still, truth be told, resemble black marbles behind lids of translucent onionskin. This doesn’t actually deprive her of vision, of course. At the time she claims Molly June as her arvie, she’s been indulging her visual cortex for seventy long years, zipping back and forth across the solar system collecting all the tourist chits one earns for seeing all the wonders of modern-day humanity: from the scrimshaw carving her immediate ancestors made of Mars to the radiant face of Unborn Jesus shining from the artfully re-configured multicolored atmosphere of Saturn. She has gloried in the catalogue of beautiful sights provided by God and all the industrious living people before her.

  Throughout all this she has been blessed with vision far greater than any we will ever know ourselves, since her umbilical interface allows her sights capable of frying merely organic eyes, and she’s far too sophisticated a person to be satisfied with the banal limitations of the merely visual spectrum. Decades of life have provided Jennifer Axioma-Singh with more depth than that. And something else: a perverse need, stranger than anything she’s ever done, and impossible to indulge without first installing herself in a healthy young arvie.

  ANCESTRY

  Jennifer Axioma-Singh has owned arvies before, each one customized from the moment of its death. She’s owned males, females, neuters, and several sexes only developed in the past decade. She’s had arvies designed for athletic prowess, arvies designed for erotic sensation, and arvies designed for survival in harsh environments. She’s even had one arvie with hypersensitive pain receptors: that, during a cold and confused period of masochism.