Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 Read Online Free PDF Page B

knew that wasn't it. "Let's find out."
    The desk clerk pulled up the records. Jenni had checked herself out.
    "Maybe she went to Wyoming?" Melissa said.
    Den sighed. "Such a bright outlook." He had a feeling where she'd gone. She wouldn't have caught a flight to Green River.
    "Feel like taking a drive?" he said to Melissa.
    It took them three hours to drive to Ridgecrest. Den reflected that it would have been marginally faster by air, considering, but driving helped to clear his head.
    It wasn't what Jenni wanted. He knew that now. They hadn't had any kind of relationship before, but the chances of anything now were nil.
    Melissa tried to reassure him.
    "Maybe at least call your dad," she'd suggested several times on the trip.
    "After, maybe," he'd replied. "I need to see."
    He pulled up outside her duplex. The yards along the street were mostly filled with dry grass and faded cheap playground equipment. He half-expected Melissa to say something, but she didn't. He liked that. She'd been conversational on the way up, and he needed that, but now he needed quiet.
    "Guess I'd better go in," he said after a few minutes.
    "I guess."
    It took him another minute, but he popped the door open and went around the car.
    A dog barked at him from a neighboring yard, and someone in the house yelled at it.
    Den went up Jenni's front walk and knocked on the door. No one answered. He knocked again, waited, then tried the handle. The door opened.
    "Jenni?" Den stepped inside. The curtains were drawn, the lights out. He could hear water running in the sink, and smell pancakes and blueberries. Someone had been cooking. Recently. In the last hour or so. "Jenni?"
    He shut off the water and went to look in the bedroom. No one. The bathroom was empty too.
    "Jenni?"
    Perhaps she wasn't here at all. Perhaps one of her lowlife friends had come in and cooked and left the water on. He went back to the front door and cast his eye around the room again. There was someone sitting in the shadows on the armchair.
    "Jenni? Is that you?"
    He went over and found her. His sister. Almost unconscious.
    "Oh," she said, barely a word, more an exhalation. Her eyes were slits.
    "What did you do?" he said.
    She just smiled back at him.
    "Jenni?" He wanted to shake her. He felt dumbfounded. Flummoxed. She'd run away and come right back here and shot up. She shouldn't have even been able to. As Melissa had said, the leg's architecture should have blocked the cycle. The receptors should have all been blocked.
    She sat up just a fraction. "Den." He voice was quiet, husky.
    "Oh, Jenni. I tried so hard." He crouched to her, putting his hand on hers on the chair's arm.
    "Listen to me. You've done it all wrong. You think you can just arrive, drag me off, and that will change everything?" She swung her new leg forward. "This is weird."
    "I didn't expect..." Den trailed off. He
had
expected, he realized. A naïve kind of knight on a steed, both in that shining armor. "You told me to begin with that you didn't need rescuing."
    She huffed. "I came back to try a couple of things. Whatever this leg has done, I can't get high. Which is kind of crappy, though my skin's not crawling the way it used to."
    "You tried?"
    "Of course I tried. That's a whole part of it, which the leg, or whatever else you've done, can't change. You know that most addicts relapse after rehab and it's simply because they go back into the same environment." She waved her hand, indicating the apartment. The blue cat sat on the table.
    Den didn't say anything.
    He took the Akai deck and removed the packaging. He put it on her lap and plucked the piano icon. It spread out. Jenni tinkled a few notes and dropped her hand. "Thanks."
    "I wanted to do something good for you," he said. "I know we don't know each other at all, but you lost your leg. And I could give you a new one."
    "Steal me a new one, you mean."
    Den hesitated. He had twisted the rules all out of shape. If someone did a little extra checking the chances