Picasso's Cat & Other Stories

Table of Contents

Introduction by Mike Resnick

The Disappearance of Josie Andrew

Just Business

The Test of Time

Stealing the Sun

The Taranth Stone

Parchment in Glass

Barnstorming

G-Bomb

Echoes in a Shattering Silence

A Matter of Pride

Learning the Language

The Vacation

Out of the Blue

1 Is True

Picasso's Cat

Acknowledgements

About Ron Collins

Copyright Information

Introduction

by Mike Resnick

I've known Ron Collins for a long time now, ever since he was knee-high to a brontosaur. (Which means I met him as an adult.) Ron is, without question, the hardest-working and most disciplined writer I've ever met. A lot of writers (most, in fact) hate writing but love having written. They apply their imaginations not to their stories, but to the avoidance of writing those stories except in situations of extreme financial desperation.

Not Ron. I don't, to this day, know for a fact that he loves the act of writing...but I know that rain or shine, sick or healthy, temporarily rich or temporarily poor, he's there every morning before the sun rises, turning out his day's quota of wordage.

Now, just producing a lot of words, while quite an accomplishment in itself, is relatively meaningless if those words aren't worth reading. That has never been Ron's problem.

I know. I've collaborated with him. I commissioned two of the stories in this book, and a bunch more that I'm sure will appear in future books.

Take a look at the stories in this volume. There are no weaklings here. Ron doesn't write weaklings.

The Disappearance of Josie Andrews addresses a major contemporary problem in a science fictional way, as the very best science fiction is supposed to do.

Some very fine stories tend to get lost. They appeared in the wrong magazine, or the wrong anthology, and good as they are they somehow miss their audience. One such story is the wonderful G-Bomb, which I commissioned from Ron for one of my anthologies. I'm delighted to see it get another airing here.

Then there's a trio of stories all set on the same world: Stealing the Sun, The Taranth Stone, and Parchment in Glass. All appeared in Analog, never an easy market to crack; and one of them (The Taranth Stone) was both the cover story and a HOMer Award winner.

The story Ron and I collaborated on went to an anthology titled Mob Magic. What I didn't know at the time was that I saw his second effort on the subject. He wasn't pleased with his first start, so he set it aside until he could analyze what was wrong with it and how to fix it, a feat he accomplished quite amusingly in Just Business.

The field of science fiction gives the writer all of time and all of space in which to set his stories, and no theme or style is taboo. The good ones – and Ron is certainly one of them – take advantage of that freedom to write all kinds of stories. Up ahead you'll find The Test of Time, a dinosaur story; 1 is True, a cyberpunk noir story; and a stunning little thousand-worder, Picasso's Cat.

Once you buy this book (and I urge you to), try to seek Ron out at a convention and get him to sign it for you. And get him talking while he’s doing it. You'll find that he's as friendly, approachable, and brilliant as this collection would lead you to believe.

The Disappearance of Josie Andrew

Stories are strange things.

Sometimes they get stuck inside me and take energy to pry away, and other times they flood out and I merely hang on for the ride. The Disappearance of Josie Andrew was the latter. I wrote the piece on a Saturday, in a single sitting and over a period of maybe four or six hours. I did not understand where it was going, and only realized it was finished when I typed the last sentence.

This is a story that has garnered a variety of commentary from readers and reviewers, particularly with regard to its commentary on choice and life. Perhaps this says more about the reader than it does the work--and I take it as a good sign, as I did not start out with any real attempt to comment on this issue that is one of the more sensitive moral matters of our time.

In fact, my sense of the story is quite different.

When the story was complete, I felt an overwhelming sense of what it meant to be a father. So when Dave Wolverton asked to publish it I was pleased that he allowed me to dedicate the piece to my dad.

A new child floats in my section today. He's number B86-97 and he feeds from tube twenty-eight, about halfway up, his shoulder pressed flat against the glass. I look at his chart. He's an early second tri who still weighs less than a pound. That tells me all I need to know. His mother was cranked.

Tube twenty-eight. The number echoes in my thoughts like a distant police siren in the middle of the night. I came to the office this morning ready to sing, but now I want to be doing almost anything else. It is not B86-97's fault though, and I try hard not to blame him for my suddenly foul mood.

The uterine chamber is over four meters in diameter and three meters high. It sits in the middle of the darkened office, its three-finger-thick Plexiglas sides held together by evenly spaced steel rods. Filtration hardware is crammed into its base, a half-meter-tall section of dusty black motors and tubes that smell faintly of warm machine oil. An aluminum hand-ladder mounted to the chamber's side leads to the insulated stainless cap, complete with a round hatch for fishing kids out at birthing time.

Inside the chamber, the children float in synthetic amniotic fluid that is corn syrup golden. Vertical columns of soft lighting illuminate the chamber from within, allowing for proper monitoring but not radically altering the children's growth process. Occasional bubbles rise through the fluid, weaving their way through masses of arms and legs and tiny heads with closed eyes and open mouths. The chamber is heated by elements that rise from the floor like brittle stalagmites, or perhaps like iron rods in a medieval torture chamber.

Ninety-six children are in my chamber today.

The steady throbs of heartbeats resonate through speakers embedded in the stainless caps, false sounds of a nonexistent mother that echo in the morning silence.

The vibrations are supposed to make the children comfortable. I guess they work. But the heartbeats ring hollowly inside me today. A taste of desperation coats my mouth.

I put my palm against the Plexiglas where B86-97 floats. Warmth flows into my hand.

I smile despite the pain this child unwittingly brings me. Good morning, Kyle, I say. That is the name I give to B86-97. Kyle Lincoln. I gaze into his tightly scrunched face and say his name three times inside my head to make sure I will remember it. I've never been good with equations or history or economics, but I can put a name to a face.

I pull my hand back, the heat of the chamber lingering like a stolen kiss.

Kyle Lincoln is curled around tube twenty-eight, absentmindedly fingering its connection to his belly.

Josie Andrew was on that tube yesterday.

A sour ball forms in my stomach. Josie's DNA scan must have turned up something this time. He was only five months along, far too early for birthing. As usual, no paperwork is on file concerning Josie's whereabouts. Nothing to indicate he was ever here. Nothing tying him to feeding tube twenty-eight, or letting anyone know he needed extra vitamin K in his diet.

Nothing to say he used to smile when I sang to him.

Returning to my desk, I see a memo on my screen, the intertwined CBC logo of the Calvin Birthing Center done in royal blue and Hollywood gold in the corner:

Please note that the Federal Child Care Commission will be here tomorrow to perform their annual licensing review. We know everyone is aware of how important this process is to our future. The auditing team will be looking for examples of our company's desire to care for the infants in our charge and our compassion for their rights as human beings.

Please take a few moments to review your records to help us put our best face forward....

I click the memo away, thinking of Josie.

He was a big child for his age, nearing three pounds. He often sucked on his thumb, rubbing his lips around the knuckle and feeling the bone that had already formed underneath. Josie's smile, instinctive or not, made my heart soar. I'm certain it wasn't my imagination that the other children gravitated toward him, too. Touching him idly, seeming to want to be close to him.

- - -

I began singing to him two months ago.

That evening had been rainy, I remember, and I hadn’t wanted to leave. There wasn't anything at home for me anyway, and after thirteen years with the company, the chamber had begun to make me feel comfortable in a way that was somehow important. The day shift had already left, and the night crew was gathered around the cafeteria, trading whatever stories they usually traded. I stood in the empty lab and stared at the children as they floated in golden fluid.

A memory flashed through my mind.

Me as a kid, standing next to my father in the morning while he shaved, my eye level coming to the edge of the sink. I tiptoe up to see white cream and black whiskers floating on the surface of the water.

I remembered him singing to me. His voice was deep and comforting, a warm, woolen blanket of sound that made me feel safe to start my day.

So standing alone in the chamber that night and gazing at the pool of lost children, I started to sing a song my father used to sing to me.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine....

And Josie smiled, stopping when I stopped and smiling again when I started. His reaction stirred something inside me. From that point on, I made it a habit to sing him a song every morning when I came in, and again every evening before I left.

Josie never failed to respond.

My own reaction surprised me.

Josie Andrew made me feel something I had never felt before. It was a feeling of connection, like having a length of fishing line tied between us that was so fine as to be invisible. But when he smiled at the sound of my voice, I felt the undeniable pull from that line. Firm, strong, and undeniably there.

At first, I found myself hurrying the mornings along so I could make it to work a little earlier every day. Then I started getting up before the alarm clock rang, and even eating a full breakfast--something I stopped doing more years ago than I can remember. I even sang in the shower to warm up my voice.

I began to wonder about Josie's future. Perhaps he could be a scientist, like I would never be. Or a lawyer. Or maybe he would entertain--I could see him as a comic, standing amid howling laughter from a roomful of people. For the first time I found myself looking at the roster of prospective parents, wondering who might make my new friend a good home.

At one point, I even thought about....

- - -

But that is past me, I know. Fanciful thinking at best, anyway.

Kyle Lincoln feeds from tube twenty-eight now.

Josie Andrew will never be a scientist, or a lawyer, or a comic, or anything else. He is dead, rotting away where the company sends kids who fail DNA scans, kids who will not turn a profit because their genes are coded for Alzheimer's, or SIDS, or whatever.

The government took abortion away, saying we would not kill as a society. I am not a politician. I don't know if this is right or wrong.

I am a technician in a birthing center, a man who does his job without asking too many questions. All I know is that the government has given us a new procedure, prebirth delivery, so that a fetus that would have been aborted can live and grow in birthing chambers.

But this same government says we cannot play God. We can understand, but cannot change. The law says we must test for genetic makeup to protect prospective parents and employers, but the same law says we cannot modify or alter the children's fate if the tests are positive.

For what must be the thousandth time I ask myself why I am doing this. My skin tingles and my head hurts. Then I think of the landlord shaking his fist under my chin, and the refrigerator that sits empty in my kitchen. The money does not come in fast enough as it is, and a thirty-five-year-old man without a degree does not easily find a job in this day and age.

Still, the memo clings in my memory like the smell of landfill.

...our compassion for their rights as human beings...

I cannot help but wonder what defect Josie inherited that signed his death warrant.

- - -

I was twenty-two years old when I took this job. Sheila had just told me we were having a baby, and I was shaken to my roots. I needed a reasonable cash flow, and six semesters at Jefferson Community had pretty much let me know I wasn't going to get a degree in anything. Not knowing what else to do, I took the job at CBC.

At first, the kids just seemed to be shells waiting to be filled, dangling from their umbilical tubes like apples growing from the branches of a tree. My work was low-level, taking fetal readings and making feeding adjustments based upon what the other techs told me. I was a floater, available for anything from janitorial clean-up to the midnight shift.

My first dumping occurred after two weeks.

I'll admit I was naive. I had no idea what my boss meant when he said it was time I had a chance to Go to Kelley's.

Kari Jones and I loaded black plastic garbage bags into the back of a pickup truck. I remember the smell of the diesel engine idling. The bags were heavy, and they made ugly slick sounds over the rumbling of the diesel as they hit the flatbed. Their bright yellow ties looked like artificial butterflies against the black bags. I worked hard that night, grabbing two sacks at a time and hauling them aboard, trying to show off.

Yes, I was married, but I was young and Kari was an attractive woman in her own way--slim and short, with brownish-red hair that curled past her shoulders and the heady air of worldly experience.

Kari told me to get in. The cab smelled of stale cigarette smoke and wintergreen air freshener. She threw a wrinkled blue bandanna onto my lap and laughed at my befuddled expression.

Just wait, you'll be glad you have it, she said.

It was early spring. The night was overcast, and the clouds reflected the ghostly sheen of the city's light. The air was pre-rain heavy, and the windshield frosted on the inside so bad we had to wait for it to clear before we could leave.

Kelley's landfill was south of town. Kari stopped the truck and opened the padlocked entrance. I remember thinking it was odd she had the key. At that time, the idea of the company paying someone to look the other way never even crossed my mind.

The truck's wheels crunched over metal and plastic. Headlights sliced erratically through the mist, exposing dead refrigerators and piles of refuse. There was no wind. I gagged against the stagnant odor. Kari, the voice of experience, tied her bandanna around her head and drew it over her nose.

I quickly did likewise.

It took fifteen minutes of driving to get to the right place.

With the headlights off, the landfill was suffocatingly oppressive. We climbed into the back, and for several minutes we flung sacks out into the inky void. One by one, they disappeared into the darkness, landing with wet impact amid the rest of the city's waste.

We made small talk on the way back, me fantasizing that Kari would stop the truck and suggest we do something I would regret later. It didn't happen, of course. I am embarrassed to admit I don't remember even being curious about what was in the bags that night.

The next day, however, I noticed we were missing two children from my chamber. When I asked my supervisor about them he grew quiet, then said simply, They're gone. If you want to keep your job here, don't ask again.

My stomach burned like I had swallowed a handful of burrs. Something in his tone reminded me of the chill of nighttime air on my bare arms as I threw plastic bags into the landfill.

A month later, my wife Sheila miscarried.

She mourned for several weeks, but I'll admit I felt relieved. We had never talked about kids before we married, and I never found the right time to tell her I am sterile. The child had been someone else's. I thought I loved Sheila enough to forgive a single mistake--or maybe I was just too embarrassed to own up to the truth at the time. Whichever, I figured she never had to know. But deep inside, the idea of raising another man's child made me queasy, and the daily discussion of Sheila's pregnancy was a constant reminder of her betrayal.

Her miscarriage meant I didn't have to face the question.

For days after that, I stood before the chamber and watched the children float. They grew larger day by day, month by month, becoming real people. I began to notice how each one was different. And I began to name them.

Megan Diane had a birthmark on her left hip and would hold her face up to listen to the artificial heartbeat. William Wallace was bold, struggling against the fluid and even beginning to swim in his last month. Seeing them in this new light made me feel small.

The chamber held from fifty to a hundred children at any one time. Professors. Bus drivers. Waitresses. Football players. Engineers. Every chamber was priceless, the future of the world.

That's when I first knew I actually wanted to be a father.

When I suggested that maybe we could adopt, Sheila yelled and screamed at me, telling me I was stupid to think we could just buy another dog to replace the one we lost. We drifted further apart over the next six months. When she turned up pregnant again, we both knew it wasn't mine.

She packed up and moved in with the guy the next day, and that's the last I ever saw of my wife. It's okay, though. An uneducated man like me is probably unfit to be a father anyway.

In the meantime, I had gone back to Kelley's three times.

- - -

It is, of course, illegal as hell to kill a fetus, regardless of its genetic makeup. The company does it to boost profit, though, knowing that a child with Multiple Sclerosis or AIDS or Huntington's disease is never going to earn out what it costs to raise them.

Everyone knows this except, apparently, the FCCC.

I sit at my desk and think of Josie Andrew. My heart sinks and I find it nearly impossible to breathe. The pressure is too much. I cannot stay here today. I stand up, my chair rolling across the floor as I walk breathlessly toward the door. The dark silhouette of my own shadow slips before me, outlined in the chamber's thin golden light. Josie's face sits inside the void, smiling at me, reacting to the tone of my voice.

The door is heavy, its knob cold against my hand.

I slip out to the hallway and press my back against the sterile white wall. My breath comes in thick lungfuls.

I am thirty-five.

I am unmarried.

And I will never be a real father.

I feel the presence of every child that has disappeared from my birthing chamber without record. Their tiny fingers gather around my throat. Josie's face lingers behind my closed eyes and I realize I cannot live with this any longer.

Josie Andrew is dead, robbed of his chance to make an impression on the world. Is there a worse fate?

I can think of only one.

I am thirty-five, I think again. No one knows I even exist. I am as good as dead, as dead as Josie Andrew.

I turn and race down the long white hallway. The air outside is December cold. I go to my car and start the engine.

There’s something I have to do.

- - -

Razor wire lines the top of the chain-link fence. It catches light from the full moon and gleams gun-barrel blue. The rotting stench is thick as gravy.

I stop my car in the shadows across the street and look at my watch. Ten minutes past one. The car door creaks as it opens. I shut it as quietly as I can. To the left is a run-down body shop, to the right is a barren field littered with dried husks where corn may grow next spring. The only sound is the wind whipping in from the northwest.

Despite three sweatshirts and a jacket, I shiver. Donning my work gloves, I stride to the fence. Tools jangle softly as I move. The flashlight beats against my thigh, and the wire cutters are cold on my hip. I reach for the surgical mask wrapped around my neck and pull it over my nose. It cuts the scent so it's almost bearable.

A thin layer of frost covers the galvanized iron of the fence.

The wire cutters are awkward.

I slice vertically through the fence, opening a slot nearly two meters tall. Using heavy pliers, I pull the fence backward at the bottom to leave a triangular opening.

I toss the cutters away and slip quietly into Kelley's landfill. The grass is dead, tall and coarse. My boots whip through it with harsh tearing sounds.

I crest a hill.

The landscape is postnuclear.

Broken shards of the world are scattered across the hillside, skeletons of human need: rusted metal that might once have been a washing machine, old lumber, shattered glass, plastic, bits of furniture.

Moonlight underlines everything in stark black shadows.

I continue, following the same path I have driven so many times in the past. How many black bags I have thrown into this void? Pink and brown faces from the chamber stick in my mind, and for a moment my breathing fails me.

Still, I move forward.

Kelley's is a large landfill.

I'm certain it is my imagination, but the ground grows more slippery as I go, and soon I feel I am skating on a layer of grease and grime. Or maybe blood and gristle.

My stomach churns. I am glad I have not eaten this evening.

In something under an hour I arrive at the place.

I would know it anywhere. I am surrounded by black mounds that close over the area, protecting the world from the wickedness of the deeds I have committed. An ominous silence covers this artificial valley. The ground here is slick and wet with frost. For the first time, I reach for my flashlight and expose the area before me.

I have never really seen it before.

A bulldozer has pushed everything into large piles. Burial mounds, I think, remembering a slice of my American history from Jefferson Community. Still, they cannot hide what I have come to find. Black plastic bags are buried in the refuse, almost hidden from sight. A single yellow twist tie blazes vividly in the beam of my flashlight.

Suddenly I am colder than I can ever remember being.

Josie Andrew is in one of these bags. I feel it in my bones. I set the flashlight at an angle to illuminate my work and walk to the mound of garbage. It is maybe four meters tall.

I put my gloved hand against the pile and climb to its top. A torn screen door is the first thing to go. I fling it away with both hands, and it flies into the darkness like a giant silver Frisbee. A soggy mattress is next. Then a rusted pan.

The work warms me.

My blood pulses, filling my body, my heart thumping proudly against my chest. I am here to find Josie, I tell myself. His lifeless body will speak to the FCCC auditors in ways more eloquent than I ever could. I am here so he can make his mark in this world.

And, maybe, I am here to begin making my own mark.

Perhaps again it is my imagination, but suddenly I