Astounding! by Kim Fielding Page B

his shoulder brushing against Carter’s. “He just left you?”
    “Well, he left my mom. I think I was an afterthought. I guess he paid child support for a while, but then he remarried and had a new family and disappeared. I haven’t seen him since I was a baby. Dunno where he lives. Don’t care.” And that was true. When he was in his teens, he’d harbored a fair amount of anger and resentment toward the son of a bitch, but he outgrew that. Now he seldom thought about the man and didn’t have any feelings about him one way or the other.
    “What about your mother?”
    That was more complicated, and Carter mulled over his answer for a while, feeling the familiar bitter burn in his chest. “She was a single parent for a while. It was tough on her. Her parents didn’t want anything to do with her and she didn’t have any money. Then she met this man. Vic. I don’t think he ever liked me all that much, but then, maybe I was a brat and deserved it. I don’t know. Anyway, Mom married Vic and pretty soon I had a half sister, and then a half brother too. Peachy keen, right?”
    Instead of answering, John gently squeezed Carter’s leg—and then kept his hand there, warm and steady.
    “Vic was heavy into religion—the fire and brimstone, repent-oh-ye-sinners kind. Mom followed him into it. Not the friendliest atmosphere for me to realize I liked boys. I didn’t come out to them until I was nineteen and in college.” He remembered the pain he’d felt during those years of secrecy, the acid weight in his stomach since he first realized he was gay. And the shame he’d felt when he finally opened up to his family, even though he’d known he had nothing to be ashamed of.
    “What happened?” John asked. Softly, barely more than a whisper.
    “Vic said I was going to hell. Said he didn’t want me anywhere near his children. And Mom chose Vic over me.” That sounded simple, didn’t it? Didn’t sound at all like having your still-beating heart ripped from your chest.
    John made a sound like a groan and scooted a bit closer, his hand still atop Carter’s leg. “I’m sorry. That’s not right.”
    “No, it’s not. But I survived. Hell, maybe the whole mess even helped me. Because every time I was tempted to slack off in school, or when starting a magazine seemed like too huge a project, I’d think of my mother and Vic and their self-righteous spawn. And I’d say to myself, I’ll show them! ”
    “So, have you?”
    Carter turned his head slightly. “Have I what?”
    “Shown them.”
    That made Carter snort. “Not really. I haven’t talked to any of them in over fifteen years. For all they know, I’m dead and burning in homo hell. Anyway, seeing as I’m nearly unemployed and destitute, I don’t really have much to brag about.”
    “You do too!” John banged his shoulder against Carter’s, hard. “Do you have any idea what your magazine means to me? What it means to a lot of people! And it’ll still carry meaning, even now that it’s out of print. But not only that. Remember what I told you before. I can see things humans can’t, and you’re a good person, Carter. You have friends who care about you. And you’ve been so kind to me, even though you think I’m crazy.”
    Carter let that final comment pass. Discussing his mother and stepfather was never a good idea. Not too long ago, Carter would have ended up downing a lot of booze. Now, he poked morosely at his empty beer bottle for a minute or two, then rolled it away. “How about you?” he asked. “What’s your family like?”
    “I don’t have one. Not… not like you. I never had one. My people are created asexually.” He sounded wistful, although Carter didn’t know what made him feel that way—John’s faux memories of his alien race or a longing for human-like parents. Carter wondered what really happened to John’s family. Maybe they cut him off for being nuts, or maybe his insanity was a way of dealing with an absence of family