Free Secret Lives by Jeff VanderMeer Page A

crumbled condition, one wing inoperable, the beak chipped, one foot half sawed-through, the feathers that had once coated its metal surface weathered or gone, so that Vaucanson’s duck looked as though it were half-plucked. A smell had risen from it, too. The smell of rotting oil, of metal parts corroding.
    Could it ever be restored? Tidwell didn’t know. But he lovingly took it from its box and set it out on the kitchen table. At some point, one of the duck’s many owners had tried to restore the duck to its former glory, with mixed results. Now one eye appeared to consist of faux emeralds, while the neck had a pattern engraved on it more common to paper doilies. The one intact leg had a similar design inflicted upon it. The duck should have been self-winding, but even the emergency wind-up mechanism, twisted and torn, couldn’t get the duck to work. Vaucanson’s creation had survived the centuries, but only as a corpse.
    Something wistful welled up in Tidwell as he sat at the table with his whisky and the mechanical bird. Something sorrowful.
    He remembered the words of the man who had started him on this path to either ruin or Enlightenment. He wondered now why he had taken them so to heart, why it had seemed at the time like a directive or a plea he could not ignore.
    Well, it was too late now for regrets. He sighed and went to get a screwdriver and some other tools. Almost from the start, he had decided to perform an autopsy on the duck should he ever get his hands on it. Between the homeless man’s comments and the remarks of the people he had encountered on his quest—including the descendents of Vaucanson—it had increasingly struck him that there might be something inside the duck even more important than its worth as an automaton.
    It took some effort to pry the matching halves apart and he was breathing heavily by the time he had finished. A flicker of deep excitement energized him, though, and it was with triumph rather than exhaustion that he finally peered into the mysteries of the duck’s innards.
    At first, he saw nothing of interest. Just gears and levers and rusted chains, the remains of a rubber tube that had served as the duck’s intestinal tract. But when he looked closer, he found, nestled deep in the bird, a compartment in which sat a round, grooved black globe the size of a human eye, and a corresponding empty space beside it.
    All the tension draining out of Tidwell, he sat back in his chair, arms behind his head, and began to laugh. This, this is what the homeless man had led him to. His journey had just begun. Caught. Afraid. Curious.
    After awhile, he began to weep, and then to reach out with a trembling hand for the black globe buried in the guts of Vaucanson’s duck, and then to pull back, as if from a flame. Reach out, pull back, reach out.
    For all I know, Tidwell is sitting there still.

THE SECRET LIFE OF
    RAJAN KHANNA
    Rajan Khanna currently works as a data manager for Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, in the New York-New Jersey area. Rajan writes short stories and novels in his spare time. His wife, Libbette Mahady, is from Queensland, Australia.
    Rajan is not religious, although, if pressed, he would say that his inclination runs more toward Eastern schools of thought, like Taoism or Zen Buddhism. Perhaps this inclination provides some evidence of a proclivity for seeing what is truly there.
    The first time Rajan came across a secret path, in Livingston, New Jersey, he was only eight, and did not recognize the significance of the event. He had drifted past the swings, jungle gym, slide, and sandbox, off toward the wooded area where he and his friends often incorporated a large concrete tube into their imaginary explorations of strange lands.
    On this particular day, Rajan was by himself, reluctant to return from a recess just ending, but reconciled to it. When he heard the teacher call to him and other stragglers, he started to walk back toward the school. Half-way there, he