Songs of Love and Death

that he still believed loved and cared for him. “You scare me,” he said aloud to it more than once. “You’re with the wrong guy, we both know that.” To his mind, the One Key, employed skillfully by someone who knew what he was doing, could probably open channels quite likely beyond the reach of the Hubble Telescope. “But that’s just not me,” Martin said sadly. “I wish it were. I really do.”

He did finally get in touch with Barry, who, as expected, claimed absolute ignorance of the laptop’s provenance, and could offer no clues toward tracing its history. “I told you everything I know the day I put it in your hands, kid.” He gave Martin the warm, confiding smile that not only attracted new victims every day, but continued to reseduce the old ones, who knew better. “I told you, you belonged together. Was I wrong? Tell me I was wrong.”

Martin sighed. “It’s like the time you sold me the motorcycle.”

Barry’s grin widened. “The Triumph. The Bonneville T100. You looked great on it.”

“I almost killed myself on it. It was way too much power for me. I sold it two weeks later and only got half what I paid you for it.” Martin rubbed his left shoulder reflectively. “This computer’s the same way.”

“I can’t take it back,” Barry said quickly. He looked alarmed, which was exceedingly rare for him, and it was Martin’s turn to smile reassuringly.

“I don’t want to sell it. I just wish I could live up to it.” He sighed again. “I wish we really did belong together.”

Lorraine came home from work then, and Barry promptly disappeared without a further word. Martin thought, Those two understand each other better than I understand either one of them. He wondered whether Lorraine had heard the last thing he said to his cousin. He wondered whether he cared.

The link, or channel, or the hailing frequency, or whatever it actually was, seemed to be open to wherever Kaskia was every five days, sometimes in the afternoon, like that first time, but most often at one or two in the morning. He often asked Kaskia what time it was there, but she seemed to have no concept of measuring time that Martin could translate into his mind. They usually spoke, through the good offices of the laptop screen, until nearly dawn, when Martin would slip quietly into bed beside Lorraine and try to catch at least two or three hours of sleep before heading off to work. It was a wearying regime, but generally manageable.

Kaskia’s English had improved further each time they communicated. When Martin questioned how she could be learning the language so fast, since she had not known of its existence until a few weeks before, she replied lightly, Must be good teacher you. Asked whether Martin could possibly learn her language in the same way, her answer was a somewhat puzzled How could you. She had not yet mastered question marks, or else there was a translation issue involved that he did not understand.

Which did not mean that she did not ask questions. She asked constantly and charmingly—if sometimes startlingly—about the smallest details of Martin’s life, from when and where and how he slept, to the names of every fruit and vegetable he handled in his work, and whether there were nildrys on his planet. Martin never found out what nildrys were, but retained the distinct impression that a planet—or did she mean a house?—without nildrys was beneath contempt.

She herself liked best to talk about her pet, whose name on the computer screen was Furtigosseachfurt, and who sounded, in Kaskia’s description, like a cross between a largish ferret and a squirrel. He was quick and affectionate, liked to have his back scratched and his belly tickled, and on occasion he hid from her behind a rock or high in a tree, and then she had to find him. Her messages regarding the creature took up so much time that Martin would rather have spent on many other matters, and he even found himself skimming a bit over writing from the stars. But they were also so tender and guilelessly touching that they brought Martin just as often close to tears. Once she wrote Sometimes he is all I have. Sometimes not. You. Because of the lack of question marks, you could imagine, if you wanted to, that she might be saying that Martin was at times all she had. Martin wanted to think so.

One day the green sparks on the screen formed one word and nothing more. Dead.

Martin never thought for a moment that she was speaking of anything but the ferret-squirrel. She never mentioned family at all, and only rarely spoke of friends or acquaintances. He wrote as earnest a condolence as he knew how, sent it off into space expecting no reply, and got none. He wrote another.

Not being an obsessive person by nature, it never occurred to him that his concern for the sorrow of a person infinitely far away across the galaxy might in any way affect his work, or concern anyone else. But in fact, his increasing distraction had indeed been noticed by his superiors at the market, and by Lorraine as well. This was less of a worry for her than it might have been—Lorraine had survived far worse disasters, and had already chosen her parachute and a cozy landing strip. But she retained a certain rough fondness for Martin, and actually wished him well; so when she confronted him for the last time, it was without much malice that she said, “I have a bet with myself. Twelve to seven that when I walk out of here, you won’t notice for three days. Want to cover it?”

Martin’s response was as distant as Kaskia’s planet, though of course Lorraine couldn’t know that. He said quietly, “You left a long time ago. I did notice.”

Somewhat off balance, Lorraine snapped, “Well, so did you. I’m not even sure you were ever here. Stop playing with that damn computer and look at me—you owe me that much. I’m at least more interesting than a blank screen!” For Martin had the laptop open, and was indeed staring at the empty screen, only now and then cutting a quick peripheral glance at her. Lorraine demanded, “What the hell are you looking at? There’s nothing there!”

“No,” Martin agreed. “Nothing there at all. Good-bye, Lorraine. My fault, I know it, I’m really sorry.” But the last words were entirely by rote, and he was looking at the computer screen again while he was speaking them. Lorraine, who had not planned to leave quite this soon, gave a short sneeze-laugh and went to make a phone call.

She would have collected on her bet, for Martin was too occupied with the One Key to be paying attention when she did leave the next day. They were into the second five-day cycle since his last communication from Kaskia, and he was growing anxious, as well as frustrated. He had reached the point lately of stepping outside when the night was at its darkest, and staring until his eyes blurred and burned up at the black, empty sky, currently just as much help to him as the empty computer screen. He would never have said—and never once did— that nothing else mattered but hearing once again from a nonhuman woman unimaginably far away on the other side of the other side, and he could not make anything else be real. All he could do, at this point, was simply to keep saying her name, as though that would make her appear.

And when he returned to the laptop she was there. Rather, the green sparks were crowding his screen, leaping this way and that, like salmon fighting their way home. And there was that unchanging alien face that chilled and haunted him so… and there was a message, as the sparks flew upward into words:I missso much so muchI misshelp me

It was as though her grief had driven her language back to the basics with which their conversation across the night had begun—how long ago it seemed now to Martin. Nevertheless, the cry for comfort was clear; and he, whom so few had ever truly needed or called on for aid, would respond. He began to type, letting the words come without reading over them:Dear lovely Kaskia,I too know something about loss.I never had such a pet as yours—I cannot have pets, because I havealways been allergic to animals.Do you know what that means,allergic?It means that the skin and the furand the hair of most animalsmakes you ill,sometimes very ill indeed.I think sometimes that I have beenallergic to people,even to my customers in the produce department,and to my fellow workers.I think I would do better with animals than people,if I were not so allergic.You have lost a great friend,but at least you let yourself have him,you took the risk of having a friend,and he had you,so you cannot ever really lose each other.

The words rolled steadily up the screen and disappeared into the night, and the stars beyond. Martin wrote on, haltingly, but never looking back.I have not been as brave as you,so I have no friend like that,except you.We cannot really know each other,and I suppose we never will,but I have come to think of you as a dear friend,and I cannot bear to think of you so unhappy.

He took a deep breath here, paused just for a moment, and went on.I am very lonely.I have always been lonely.It is my fault.Do not let your grief shut you off.It is too easy,and it lasts too long.Oh, Kaskia, so far away

The screen, with his last words still on it, went abruptly blank. Martin stared. The laptop was vibrating under his hands, making a sound like an old-fashioned sewing machine, or a car about to throw a rod. It stopped presently, and new words began to appear on the screen. They were like the sparkling pixel words that Kaskia had