Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 by Penny Publications Read Free Book Online Page B

several times, and the standard image appeared. The old man sat cross-legged before them.
    "What do you need?"
    "I need to magnify down where his feet are."
    "You draw a box," said Quarles. He put his finger to the screen and, a lime-green line following his finger's path, drew a rectangle enclosing the prisoner's feet. The box remained when he withdrew his hand; when he tapped the box, the image within expanded to fill the screen, black bars along the top and bottom. The image initially appeared hazy. "Give it a—" Quarles said, and the picture sharpened.
    "Do you see that?" Jimmy touched the screen and jerked his hand away, leaving a green smudge by the prisoner's left foot.
    Quarles moved his face closer. "I'm not—what are you seeing?"
    "What's this look like from the side?"
    Quarles restored the original image. "What side?"
    "His left."
    Open palm on the screen, Quarles pulled to his left, and the image rolled away to be replaced by a side angle. "Same spot?"
    "From the foot on back. Can we get lower?"
    "I think there's a camera down there."
    Quarles made a two-fingered gesture that brought up a menu. After some manipulation, the image shifted so the view was at floor level, from one of the front corners. Again Quarles constructed a box and again he made it huge.
    "His butt's not on the floor. Is it?"
    Quarles stepped back. "What, you think he's
floating?"
    Lt. Col. Oblonski had said a man with mental powers could float. He could phase through a wall. He could summon rain. Though Jimmy's own abilities defied standard scientific descriptions, even he felt such scenarios were not credible.
    "No. Look. He's pushing with his... I guess his calves? His ankles? The sides of his feet are touching, but nothing else is."
    "What's that mean?"
    "It means walking to the toilet isn't his only exercise."
10. From the Sky
    Never a coffee drinker, Jimmy witnessed with some envy the obvious pleasure it provided to the other patrons of the cafe. He had stayed overnight in an upstairs room overlooking the sinkhole—he was pretty sure he heard a cat fall in at one point, pretty much the only sound after businesses closed along the impassable street—and now was seated at the scene of yesterday's interview, wondering whether he could discern a next step.
    After her rescue, stunned and soaked, the teacher had sat on the sidewalk with other people until the EMTs arrived. "It's possible I exaggerated," she conceded. "Maybe the door was already off before he got to it. There was a wrenching metal sound. You know the sound.
Grrronnnk.
And then this tremendous
SNAP!
like something breaking. And,
zoop!,
he pulled me up out of there. When you encounter something unexpected, your mind tries to construct a meaningful narrative—even if the narrative seems crazy."
    He knew what she meant. He had paid for her dessert.
    Inch-thick bread for the two slices of French toast soaked up the syrup quickly. He poured more and observed a man at another table, jaw sunk below his shirt collar, delicately sip his coffee, plump thumb and index finger pincering the mug's handle. The man peered with great intensity at the television mounted high in the diner's front corner. Jimmy cut another chunk with his fork's edge.
    "That's weird." The man sipping coffee had spoken. Jimmy followed his attention to the television. He saw heavy fog—evidently the end of a weather report—followed by the image of a human-high white boulder. The reporter called it a "hailstone."
    "Very
weird," the other man said.
    "What was that about?"
    Without turning his head, the man said, "Those folks got hailstones the size of
cars".
    "And fog?"
    "Those were
clouds.
The weather woman said the clouds came down
to the ground.
And then they turned to water. That's as crazy as what happened here!"
    Someone had left the morning's newspaper on the counter. Ferrisburg, Maryland, had had a spectacularly unstable day. Lives were lost. But a rescuer no one knew had moved among them. And, reportedly,