Magic Time: Ghostlands by Robert Charles Wilson, Marc Scott Zicree Page A

greater than parlor tricks such as passing through walls or making balls of light. The block-and-tackle doesn’t question its purpose, nor the spatula nor the paper clip. But because we are conscious, we do, endlessly.
    “Calvin, if Colleen is our rock and Goldie our erratic sage, then you are our beacon. Shine, Calvin. Just shine.”
    “They’re looking to me to be something I’m not,” Cal said. “To be this… legend. I mean, Jesus, they broke out of slavery, came on the run in search of this larger-than-life tin god.”
    “And that is such a bad thing?”
    “If the Change brought about anything good, it’s that it made me be who I am instead of pretending to be something I’m not.”
    “Calvin, six words. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. ”
    “For someone from Kiev, you’ve seen a lot of American movies.”
    “Five years of selling hot dogs and not going to singles bars.”
    “Okay, okay, I get your point. Print the Legend. If the Legend is what these people need—and what I suppose we need, too—then maybe I shouldn’t avoid it but rather embrace it.”
    “I must say, Calvin, you’re getting so adept at articulating what I am about to say, you really don’t need me anymore. Pray continue.”
    “These people are looking for a cure, and I don’t have one. But you’d say it’s like medicine. Sometimes hope is all you can offer, and though it may seem a false hope, it can help people marshal their forces, actually get better.”
    “Yes,” Doc replied. “Miracles do happen, if one comes to it with a good heart and the possibility of good actually happening.”
    Cal mulled it over, then said, “It’s medicine, even if it’s an empty black bag on one hand…the Storm on the other. Which is the better choice to offer?”
    “And what is your answer?”
    “My answer is, I’ll think on it. I’m not saying yes.”
    “Any other reply, and I would conclude you were a spatula. But before this is over, Calvin, I suspect you will have to be our Gandhi and our Eleanor Roosevelt and our General Patton all in one. So I would advise you to get used to it.”
    All Cal said to that was, “Mm.”
    “And one thing more I might add for you to consider.”
    “ Another thing?”
    “We are embarked on a journey into the unknown—which, I might observe, is indeed true of life in its entirety—but even more so now. You cannot know what you will need at your ultimate moment of truth…nor whom. So giventhat, it is a good idea to bring as wide a variety of dramatis personae as possible.”
    Cal grinned. “Back to the theater metaphor.”
    “We are but players….” Doc rose with a groan. “Now, I’m afraid this old man is weary. If you will excuse me…”
    “She deserves you,” Cal murmured. “Colleen.”
    Doc nodded, accepting Cal’s acceptance. He continued on, limping slightly as he went.
    “Doc?” Cal asked. Doc turned back. “What role do you play in our little band?”
    “Me?” He considered it. “I am the mirror for the rest of you.” He smiled. “Good night, Calvin.”
     
    Colleen and Doc bedded down in what had once been a Waldenbooks, amid the cracked vacant shelves, the discarded magazines displaying brides and movie stars and politicians. Sleep wouldn’t come to Colleen, which was nothing new, merely the ongoing challenge of relaxing and letting go of vigilance. Nevertheless, she forced stillness on herself and cradled Viktor in her arms as he drifted into sleep.
    She maintained the contact even when, in troubled dreams, he called out to Yelena and Nurya, his lost wife and daughter, as he often did.
    Colleen envied them their eternal claim on him. He had jettisoned so much of his past, had brought along no images of them (“No photograph could adequately capture what I hold in my mind,” he told her on one of the rare occasions she could coax him to speak of them). She wished she could see them just once, see what he had cherished and lost. That wound so defined him, had so