Read Online Asimov's SF, February 2010 by Dell Magazine Authors - Free Book Online Page B

Aloud, Jive said, softly, “Help me.” Tears ran down his cheeks.
    * * * *
    Hammerlock Ganji reached Jive on his phone as he waited impatiently in the research thanatorium lobby for his cab back to the city.
    "You're better off waiting there until things calm down, chief,” the secretary told him, licking lips nervously.
    "Tarry in Brooklyn? Don't be absurd, Ganji.” A small red gypsy cab pulled up outside the plate glass lobby. God, is that what we've sunk to now, in our effort to attain a low fiscal profile? Through the dirty vehicle window he saw a villainous wild-haired import from Turkestan or points farther east apparently shouting into an old-fashioned mic with a helical cable. A moment later the cool receptionist crossed the carpet and murmured that his ride awaited. Jive gave her a reflex smile and nod, and went out into the soletta-muted sunlight. A disturbing tang hung in the air. Wood smoke? He coughed, suddenly. Something more toxic than that.
    "Get in, mister, you want a ride,” the driver told him, pushing the passenger door open from the inside. “We gotta move fast, before anyone catches on we're coming from this science place."
    "What?” Jive had no chance to buckle up before the cabbie took off with a screech. They tore through a small crowd of scowling citizens who loitered at the gates of the lab. What the hell? There was a thud, and another. “For the love of sweet Harry,” he cried, “those fools are throwing rocks at you."
    "Not me, professor—you.” He gunned the little car's electric hybrid engine, flung it onto the feeder to the bridge. Jive ducked his tall head, wound down the filthy window. Streamers and pillars of smoke were slowly drifting upward from the Manhattan skyline, billowing into the damaged sunlight. “Blogs are saying kill all scientists."
    "I'm not a scientist, I'm a ... a high-status administrator.” For some reason, saying so made Jive Bolen feel profoundly ashamed. “It's part of my duties to oversee the efforts of bona-fide researchers in the domain of—” He broke off. “Christ, why am I explaining myself to a gypsy hack? Just get me to the zeugma, and step on it."
    His homeowatch and phone were both peeping; he shifted his mind into high, concentrated gear. A thudding racket ahead pulled up his head. A laden moving van had ploughed into two or three cars illegally stopped at the edge of the feeder. The ‘stanner cursed or prayed vehemently, perhaps in the name of Allah, and jerked them to one side, skidding past the pile-up. God almighty, men stood by the side of the road with rifles and shotguns. The windshield starred, shattered, fell into fragments of safety glass. Ganji said, faintly, like a voice of conscience, “Bolen, the thays want all the scientists dead. The streets are clogged with crazies who agree with them. Just get the hell off the road and lay low for a—"
    Impact jarred his teeth. The door beside him sprang open, and Jive tumbled bruisingly to the road surface. Pain tore up his right arm as his hand broke at the wrist. He lost consciousness. The pain was gone. He lay in the silent, empty street for minutes or hours, passing in and out of clarity. People were moving past him. Nobody stopped to help. The damn world's gone mad, he told himself. It's been a powder keg ready to go bang ever since the hothouse shock really struck home, when we realized we needed to spend every penny the world makes putting up that shield in space. And Christ knows what that's done, in addition. He seemed for a moment to be back in the Wee Kirk i’ the Glen, hearing obese, powerful Sister Mary Magdalene belt out the verses of “God of Earth and Outer Space,” that sprightly Baptist hymnal entry by the Welshman Joseph Parry. He smiled in the grey twilight. A lot they knew about outer space back then, in the nineteenth century. Sister Mary powered away as he piped along in the choir, with his sisters singing lustily. Where are they, he asked himself. Where are my