Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction, page 426
It was silent inside the outpost. A ridge of dead muffins two feet high was piled up against the door. None of the little horrors moved. Together, the two men emerged from the storeroom.
Light poured down from the overheads. They still had power. The interior of the outpost was heaped high with tiny cadavers. There were dead muffins everywhere: on the dining table, in opened storage cabinets, under benches, beneath exposed supplies, and all over the kitchen area. They were crammed impossibly tight together in corners, in the living quarters, on shelves. Their flattened, furry, motionless bodies had clogged the food prep area and the toilets, filled the showers and every empty container and tube.
Bright daylight poured through the still open front door. Scavengers, or wind, or marauding muffins had reduced the avalanche of dead muffins on the porch to the same height of two feet that had accumulated against the storeroom portal. The wasted agents could go outside, if they wished. After weeks of unending peep-peeping, the ensuing silence was loud enough to hurt Bowman’s ears.
“It’s over.” LeCleur was brushing dead muffins off the kitchen table. “How about some tea and coffee? If I can get any of the appliances to work, that is.”
Setting his rifle aside , Bowman slumped into a chair and dropped his head onto his crossed forearms. “I don’t give a damn what it is or if it’s ice cold. Right now my throat will take anything.”
Nodding, LeCleur waded through dunes comprised of dead muffins and began a struggle to coax the beverage maker to life. Every so often, he would pause to shove or throw dead muffins out of his way, not caring where they landed. The awful smell was no better, but by now their stressed bodies had come to tolerate it without comment.
A large, mobile shape came gliding through the gaping front door.
Forgetting the beverage maker, LeCleur threw himself toward where he had left his rifle standing against a counter. Bowman reached for his own weapon, caught one leg against the chair on which he was sitting, and crashed to the floor with the chair tangled up in his legs.
Gripping his staff, Old Malakotee paused to stare at them both. “You alive. I surprised.” His alien gaze swept the room, taking in the thousands of deceased muffins, the destruction of property, and the stench. “Very surprised. But glad.”
“So are we.” Untangling himself from the chair, a chagrined Bowman rose to greet their visitor. “Both of those things. What are you doing back here?”
“I know!” A wide smile broke out on the jubilant LeCleur’s face: the first smile of any kind he had shown for days. “It’s over. The migration’s over, and the Akoe have come back!”
Old Malakotee regarded the exultant human somberly. “The migration is not over, skyman Le’leur. It still continue.” He turned to regard the uncertain Bowman. “But we like you people. I tell my tribe: we must try to help.” He gestured outside. Leaning to look, both men could see a small knot of Akoe males standing and waiting in the stinking sunshine. They looked competent, but uneasy. Their postures were alert, their gazes wary.
“You come with us now.” The elder gestured energetically. “Not much time. Akoe help you.”
“It’s okay.” Bowman gestured to take in their surroundings. “We’ll clear all this out. We have machines to help us. You’ll see. In a week or two everything here will be cleaned up and back to normal. Then you can visit us again, and try our food and drink as you did before, and we can talk.”
The agent was feeling expansive. They had suffered through everything the muffin migration could throw at them, and had survived. Next time, maybe next year, the larger, better equipped team that would arrive to relieve them would be properly informed of the danger and appropriately equipped to deal with it. What he and LeCleur had experienced was just one more consequence of being the primary survey and sampling team on a new world. It came with the job.
“Not visit!” Old Malakotee was emphatic. “You come with us now! Akoe protect you, show you how to survive migration. Go to deep caves and hide.”
LeCleur joined in. “We don’t have to hide, Malakotee. Not anymore. Even if the migration’s not over, it’s obviously passed this place by.”
“Juvenile migration passed.” Stepping back, Old Malakotee eyed them flatly. Outside, the younger Akoe were already clamoring to leave. “Now adults come.”
Bowman blinked, uncertain he had heard correctly. “Adults?” He looked back at LeCleur, whose expression reflected the same bewilderment his partner was feeling. “But—the muffins.” He kicked at the half dozen quiescent bodies scattered around his feet. “These aren’t the adults?”
“They juveniles.” Malakotee stared at him unblinkingly. His demeanor was assurance enough this was not a joke.
“Then if every muffin we’ve been seeing these past seven months has been a juvenile or an infant…” LeCleur was licking his lips nervously. “Where are the adults?”
The native tapped the floor with the butt of his staff. “In ground. Hibernating.” Bowman struggled to get the meaning of the alien words right. “Growing. Once a year, come out.”
The agent swallowed. “They come out—and then what?”
Old Malakotee’s alien gaze met that of the human. “Migrate.” Raising a multi-fingered hand, he pointed. To the southeast. “That way.”
“No wonder.” LeCleur was murmuring softly. “No wonder the juvenile muffins flee in such a frenzy. We’ve already seen that the species is cannibalistic. If the juveniles eat one another, then the adults….” His voice trailed off.
“I take it,” Bowman inquired of the native, surprised at how calm his voice had become, “that the adults are a little bigger than the juveniles?”
Old Malakotee made the Akoe gesture signifying concurrence. “Much bigger. Also hungrier. Been in ground long, long time. Very hungry when come out.” He started toward the doorway. “Must go quickly now. You come—or stay.”
Weak from fatigue, Bowman turned to consider the interior of the outpost; the ruined instrumentation, the devastated equipment, the masses of dead muffins. Juvenile muffins, he reminded himself. He contemplated the havoc they had wrought. What would the adults be like? Bigger, Old Malakotee had told them. Bigger, and hungrier. But not, he told himself, necessarily cuter.
Outside, the little band of intrepid Akoe was already moving off, heading at a steady lope for the muffin-bridged ravine, their tails switching rhythmically behind them. Standing at the door, Bowman and LeCleur watched them go. What would the temperature in the deep caves to the north be like? How long could they survive on Akoe food? Could they even keep up with the well-conditioned, fast-moving aliens, who were in their element running for days on end over the grassy plains? The two men exchanged a glance. At least they had a choice. Didn’t they? Well, didn’t they?
Beneath their feet, something moved. The ground quivered, ever so slightly.
* * * *
Copyright © 2000 by Thranx. Inc.; first appeared in Star Colonies; from EXECPTIONS TO REALITY; reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
GREGORY FROST
(1951- )
Before my first year of college started I moved to Philadephia and got a job in a bookstore. Since I loved science fiction, I was quickly introduced to Greg Frost, who worked upstairs in the music department. At that point, Lyrec (1984) was out, and Tain (1986) was about to hit the bookstores. It had never occurred to me that a “real” writer would have to work in a bookstore to support himself—an important lesson for the aspiring writer I was at the time. Greg was amazingly generous with his time and advice, giving me the first really professional (and a little bit traumatizing) critique one of my stories had ever received. (There’s a reason he’s repeatedly asked to teach at Clarion.) He’s been just as generous with his friendship over the years, although happily enough his career has moved past the working-in-bookstores stage.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Greg went to Drake University to study art, intending to be a comic book illustrator. In his second year, he began to dabble with writing; in his third year, a fire in his apartment destroyed all his artwork, but left a single short story intact. Taking that as a sign, he enrolled in the writing program at the University of Iowa, earning his BA in 1976. He attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 1975 and has returned several times as one of the instructors. Along with Judith Berman and Richard Butner, Greg also ran the Sycamore Hill Writers Workshops in the 1990s, and is very much a part of the vibrant Philadelphia-area science fiction community—as in Toronto, the Philadelphia writers are a fairly close-knit but friendly group, and there is a large and active Philadelphia fandom.
He works at Swarthmore College, where he is the Fiction Writing Workshop Director.
Much of Greg’s writing takes place at the intersection of fantasy, science fiction, and folklore. Tain and its sequels, for instance, are drawn from Irish folktales. Even in a straightforwardly SF story like “Madonna of the Maquiladora,” there are heavy overtones of faith and folklore, and our need to believe in other people’s visions.
MADONNA OF THE MAQUILADORA, by Gregory Frost
First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, May 2002
You first hear of Gabriel Perea and the Virgin while covering the latest fire at the Chevron refinery in El Paso. The blaze is under control, the water cannon hoses still shooting white arches into the scorched sky.
You’ve collected some decent shots, but you would still like to capture something unique even though you know most of it won’t get used. The Herald needs only one all-inclusive shot of this fire, and you got that hours ago. The rest is out of love. You like to think there’s a piece of W. Eugene Smith in you, an aperture in your soul always seeking the perfect image.
The two firemen leaning against one of the trucks is a good natural composition. Their plastic clothes are grease-smeared; their faces, with the hoods off, are pristine. Both the men are Hispanic, but the soot all around them makes them seem pallid and angelic and strange. And both of them are smoking. It’s really too good to ignore. You set up the shot without them knowing, without seeming to pay them much attention, and that’s when you catch the snippet of their conversation.
“I’m telling you, cholo, the Virgin told Perea this explosion would happen. Mrs. Delgado knew all about it.”
“She tells him everything. She’s telling us all. The time is coming, I think.”
Click. “What time is that?” you ask, capping the camera.
The two men stare at you a moment. You spoke in Spanish—part of the reason the paper hired you. Just by your inflection, though, they know you’re not a native. You may understand all right, but you are an outsider.
The closest fireman smiles. His teeth are perfect, whiter than the white bar of the Chevron insignia beside him. Mexicans have good tooth genes, you think. His smile is his answer: He’s not going to say more.
“All right, then. Who’s Gabriel Perea?”
“Oh, he’s a prophet. The prophet, man.”
“A seer.”
“He knows things. The Virgin tells him.”
“The Virgin Mary?” Your disbelief is all too plain.
The first fireman nods and flicks away his cigarette butt, the gesture transforming into a cross—“Bless me, father…”
“Does he work for Chevron?”
The firemen look at each other and laugh. “You kidding, man? They’d never hire him, even if he made it across the Rio Bravo with a green card between his teeth.”
Rio Bravo is what they call the Rio Grande. You turn and look, out past the refinery towers, past the scrub and sand and the Whataburger stand, out across the river banks to the brown speckled bluffs, the shapes that glitter and ripple like a mirage in the distance.
Juarez.
“He’s over there?”
“Un esclavo de la maquiladora.”
A factory slave. Already you’re imagining the photo essay. “The Man Who Speaks to the Virgin,” imagining it in The Smithsonian, The National Geographic. An essay on Juarez, hell on earth, and smack in the middle of hell, the Virgin Mary and her disciple. It assembles as if it’s been waiting for you to find it.
“How about,” you say, “I buy you guys a few beers when you’re finished and you tell me more about him.”
The second guy stands up, grinning. “Hey, we’re finished now, amigo.”
“Yeah, that fire’s drowning. Nothing gonna blow today. The Virgin said so.”
You follow them, then, with a sky black and roiling on all sides like a Biblical plague settling in for a prolonged stay.
* * * *
You don’t believe in her. You haven’t since long ago, decades, childhood. Lapsed Catholics adopt the faith of opposition. The Church lied to you all the time you were growing up. Manipulated your fears and guilts. You don’t plan to forgive them for this. The ones who stay believers are the ones who didn’t ask questions, who accepted the rules, the restrictions, on faith. Faith, you contend, is all about not asking the most important questions. Most people don’t think; most people follow in their hymnals. It takes no more than a fingernail to scrape the gilt from the statues and see the rot below. Virgin Mary didn’t exist for hundreds of years after the death of Jesus. She was fashioned by an edict, by a not very bright emperor. She had a cult following and they gained influence and the ear of Constantine. It was all politics. Quid pro quo. Bullshit. This is not what you tell the firemen, but it does make the Virgin the perfect queen for Juarez: that place is all politics and bullshit, too. Reality wrapped in a shroud of the fantastic and the grotesque. Just like the Church itself.
You went across the first time two years ago, right after arriving. The managing editor, a burly, bearded radical in a sportcoat and tie named Joe Baum took you in. He knew how you felt about the power of photography, and after all you’re the deputy art director. One afternoon he just walked over to your desk and said, “Come on, we’re gonna take the afternoon, go visit some people you need to see.” You didn’t understand until later that he was talking about the ones on film. Most of them were dead.
Baum covered El Paso cultural events, which meant he mingled with managers and owners of the maquiladoras. “We’ll have to get you into the loop. Always need pictures of the overlords in their tuxes to biff up the society pages.” He didn’t like them too much.
In his green Ford you crossed over on the Puente Libre, all concrete and barbed wire. He talked the whole time he drove. “What you’re gonna see here is George Bush’s New World Order, and don’t kid yourself that it isn’t. Probably you won’t want to see it. Hell, I don’t want to see it, and America doesn’t want to see it with a vengeance.”
He took you to the apartment of a man named Jaime Pollamano. Baum calls him the Chicken Man. Mustache, dark hair, tattoos. A face like a young Charles Bronson. Chicken Man is a street photographer. “We buy some of his photos, and we buy some from the others.” There were six or seven in the little apartment that day, one of them, unexpectedly, a woman. The windows were covered, and an old sheet had been stuck up on the wall. They’d been expecting you. Baum had arranged in advance for your edification. “What you’re gonna see today,” he promised, “is the photos we don’t buy.”
The slide show began. Pictures splashed across the sheet on the wall.
First there were the female corpses, all in various states of decay and decomposition. Most were nude, but they weren’t really bodies as much as sculptures now in leather and wood. The photographers had made them strange and haunting and terrifying, all at the same time. In the projector light you can see their eyes—squinting, hard, glancing down, here and there a look of pride, something almost feral. The woman is different. She stares straight at death.
“Teenage girls,” Baum told you while the images kept coming. “They get up at like 4 a.m. to walk for miles to catch a bus to take them to a factory by six. They live in colonias, little squatter villages made of pallet wood and trash. Most of these girls here were kidnapped on the way to work. Tortured, raped, murdered. Nobody goes looking for them much. Employee turnover in the maquiladoras is between fifty and a hundred and fifty percent annually, so they’re viewed as just another runaway chica who has to be replaced. The pandillas, the local gangs, get them, or federales on patrol, or even the occasional serial murderer. Who knows who? No one’s looking for her anyway, save maybe her family.”
All you could think to say was, “They’ve lost their breadwinner.”
Baum snorted. “That’s right. She worked a forty-eight hour week, six days, for about twenty-five dollars.”
“A day?”
“A week. Per day they make about four dollars and fifty cents. Not just these girls, you understand. All of ’em. All the workers.”
You tried to work that out, how they live on so little money. Finally you suggested, “The cost of living here is cheaper?” The handsome woman photographer’s eyes shifted to you, cold with disgust.
The pictures never stopped coming. You finally passed the gauntlet of dead women. Now it was a man dangling like a piñata from a power line. He’d been electrocuted while trying to run a line from a transformer to his home. Then other dead men. Some dying in the street with people all around them. Others dead like the women, executed, tortured, burned alive. You tried to look elsewhere as the images just kept slamming the wall. How many deaths could there be? Baum suddenly said, “Let me put the cost of living thing in perspective for you. You’re seventeen, you live in El Paso, you work six days a week all day and you buy your groceries and pay your bills on your thirty-five dollar paycheck. That’s adjusted gross to compensate for the differences in cost on our side of the river.
“On this side along the river there are over three hundred factories. Big names you know: RCA, Motorola, Westinghouse, GE. We use their products, we all do. They employ almost 200,000 workers, mostly female, living crammed into the colonias, altogether about two million people. That’s eighty percent unemployment, by the way.”
