The Postutopian Adventures of Darger and Surplus

by Michael Swanwick

  “That is an outrageous implication, and from a man I respected less highly than I do you, I would not put up with it. However”—Darger gestured out the window at the busy warehouses and transshipment buildings—“I understand that you own half of everything we see. Lend my consortium a building in which to perform our operation and then place as many guards as you like around that building. We will bring in our apparatus and you will bring in the silver. Deal?”

  For a brief moment, Pirate Lafitte hesitated. Then, “Done!” he snapped, and offered his hand. “For fifteen percent. Plus rental of the building.”

  They shook, and Darger said, “You will have no objection to having the ingot tested by a reputable assayist.”

  In the French Quarter, meanwhile, Surplus was having an almost identical conversation with a slight and acerbic woman, clad in a severe black dress, who was not only the mayor of New Orleans but also the proprietress of its largest and most notorious brothel. Behind her, alert and unspeaking, stood two uniformed ape-men from the Canadian Northwest, both with the expressions of baffled anger common to beasts that have been elevated almost but not quite to human intelligence. “An assayist?” she demanded. “Is my word not good enough for you? And if it is not, should we be doing business at all?”

  “The answer to all three of your questions, Madam-Mayor Tresjolie, is yes,” Surplus said amiably. “The assay is for your own protection. As you doubtless know, silver is routinely adulterated with other metals. When we are done with the silver, the slurry will be melted down and recast into an ingot. Certainly, you will want to know that the bar returned to you is of equal worth to the bar you rented out.”

  “Hmmm.” They were sitting in the lobby of the madam-mayor’s maison de tolérance, she in a flaring wicker chair whose similarity to a throne could not possibly be unintentional, and Surplus on a wooden folding chair facing her. Because it was still early afternoon, the facility was not open for business. But messengers and government flunkies came and went. Now one such whispered in Madam-Mayor Tresjolie’s ear. She waved him away. “Seventeen and a half percent, take it or leave it.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Good,” Tresjolie said. “I have business with the zombie master now. Move your chair alongside mine, and stay to watch. If we are to do business, you will find this salubrious.”

  A round and cheerful man entered the public room, followed by half a dozen zombies. Surplus studied these with interest. Though their eyes were dull, their faces were stiff, and there was an unhealthy sheen to their skin, they looked in no way like the rotting corpses of Utopian legend. Rather, they looked like day laborers who had been worked into a state of complete exhaustion. Which doubtless was the case.

  “Good morning!” said the jolly man, rubbing his hands briskly together. “I have brought this week’s coffle of debtors who, having served their time, are now eligible for forgiveness and manumission.”

  “I had wondered at the source of your involuntary labor force,” Surplus said. “They are unfortunates who fell into arrears, then?”

  “Exactly so,” said the zombie master. “New Orleans does not engage in the barbarous and expensive practice of funding debtors’ prisons. Instead, debt-criminals are chemically rendered incapable of independent thought and put to work until they have paid off their debt to society. Which today’s happy fellows have done.” With a roguish wink, he added, “You may want to keep this in mind before running up too great a line of credit at the rooms upstairs. Are you ready to begin, Madam-Mayor Tresjolie?”

  “You may proceed, Master Bones.”

  Master Bones gestured imperiously and the first zombie shuffled forward. “Through profligacy you fell into debt,” he said, “and through honest labor you have earned your way out. Open your mouth.”

  The pallid creature obeyed. Master Bones produced a spoon and dipped into a salt cellar on a nearby table. He dumped the salt into the man’s mouth. “Now swallow.”

  By gradual degrees, a remarkable transformation came over the man. He straightened and looked about him with tentative alertness. “I…” he said. “I remember now. Is my…is my wife…?”

  “Silence,” the zombie master said. “The ceremony is not yet complete.” The Canadian guardsmen had shifted position to defend their mistress, should the disoriented ex-zombie attack her.

  “You are hereby declared a free citizen of New Orleans again, and indebted to no man,” Tresjolie said solemnly. “Go and overspend no more.” She extended a leg and lifted her skirts above her ankle. “You may now kiss my foot.”

  “So did you ask Tresjolie for a line of credit at her sporting house?” Tawny asked when Surplus reported his adventure to his confederates.

  “Certainly not!” Surplus exclaimed. “I told her instead that it has always been my ambition to own a small but select private brothel, one dedicated solely to my own personal use. A harem, if you will, but one peopled by a rotating staff of well-paid employees. I suggested I might shortly be in a position to commission her to find an appropriate hotel and create such an institution for me.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me that she doubted I was aware of exactly how expensive such an operation would be.”

  “And you said to her?

  “That I didn’t think money would be problem,” Surplus said airily. “Because I expected to come into a great deal of it very soon.”

  Tawny crowed with delight. “Oh, you boys are such fun!”

  “In unrelated news,” Darger said, “your new dress has come.”

  “I saw it when it first arrived.” Tawny made a face. “It is not calculated to show off my body to its best advantage—or to any advantage at all, come to that.”

  “It is indeed aggressively modest,” Darger agreed. “However, your character is demure and inexperienced. To her innocent eyes, New Orleans is a terribly wicked place, indeed a cesspool of carnality and related sins. Therefore, she needs to be protected at all times by unrevealing apparel and stalwart men of the highest moral character.”

  “Further,” Surplus amplified, “she is the weak point in our plans, for whoever has possession of her tattoo and knows its meaning can dispense with us entirely by kidnapping her off the street.”

  “Oh!” Tawny said in a small voice, clearly intended to arouse the protective instincts of any man nearby.

  Surplus took an instinctive step toward her, and then caught himself. He grinned like the carnivore he was. “You’ll do.”

  The third meeting with a potential investor took place that evening in a dimly lit club in a rundown parish on the fringe of the French Quarter—for the entertainment was, in the public mind, far too louche for even that notoriously open-minded neighborhood. Pallid waitresses moved lifelessly between the small tables, taking orders and delivering drinks while a small brass-and-drums jazz ensemble played appropriately sleazy music to accompany the stage show.

  “I see that you are no aficionado of live sex displays,” the zombie master Jeremy Bones said. The light from the candle votive on the table made the beads of sweat on his face shine like luminous drops of rain.

  “The artistic success of such displays depends entirely on the degree to which they agree with one’s own sexual proclivities,” Darger replied. “I confess that mine lie elsewhere. But never mind that. Returning to the subject at hand: The terms are agreeable to you, then?”

  “They are. I am unclear, however, as to why you insist the assay be performed at the Bank of San Francisco, when New Orleans has several fine financial institutions of its own.”

  “All of which are owned in part by you, Madam-Mayor Tresjolie, and Duke Lafitte.”

  “Pirate Lafitte, you mean. An assay is an assay and a bank is a bank. Why should it matter to you which one is employed?”

  “Earlier today, you brought six zombies to the mayor to be freed. Assuming this is a typical week, that would be roughly three hundred zombies per year. Yet all the menial work in the city has been hand
ed over to zombies and there still remain tens of thousands at work in the plantations that line the river.”

  “Many of those who fall into debt draw multi-year sentences.”

  “I asked around, and discovered that Lafitte’s ships import some two hundred prisoners a week from municipalities and territories all the way up the Mississippi to St. Louis.”

  A small smile played on the fat man’s face. “It is true that many government bodies find it cheaper to pay us to deal with their troublemakers than to build prisons for them.”

  “Madam-Mayor Tresjolie condemns these unfortunates into the city’s penal system, you pay her by body count, and after they have been zombified you lease them out for menial labor at prices that employers find irresistible. Those who enter your service rarely leave it.”

  “If a government official or family member presents me with papers proving that somebody’s debt to society has been paid off, I am invariably happy to free them. I grant you that few ever come to me with such documentation. But I am always available to those who do. Exactly what is your objection to this arrangement?”

  “Objection?” Darger said in surprise. “I have no objection. This is your system and as an outsider I have no say in it. I am merely explaining the reason why I wished to use an independent bank for the assay.”

  “Which is?”

  “Simply that, happy though I am to deal with you three individually, collectively I find you far too shrewd.” Darger turned to stare at the stage, where naked zombies coupled joylessly. Near the front, a spectator removed several banknotes from his wallet and tapped them meaningfully on his table. One of the lifeless waitresses picked up the money and led him through a curtain at the back of the room. “Acting together, I suspect you would swallow me and my partners in a single gulp.”

  “Oh, there is no fear of that,” Master Bones said. “We three only act collectively when there is serious profit in the offing. Your little enterprise—whatever it is—hardly qualifies.”

  “I am relieved to hear it.”

  The next day, the three conspirators made three distinct trips to the Assay Office at the New Orleans branch of the Bank of San Francisco. On the first trip, one of Madam-Mayor Tresjolie’s green-jacketed zombie bodyguards opened a lockbox, withdrew a silver ingot, and placed it on the workbench. Then, to the astonishment of both the mayor and the assayist, Surplus directed his own hired zombies to hoist several heavy leather bags to the bench as well, and with the aid of his colleagues began pulling out drills, scales, acids, reagents, and other tools and supplies and setting them in working order.

  The affronted assayist opened his mouth to object, but—“I’m sure you won’t mind if we provide our own equipment,” Darger said suavely. “We are strangers here, and while nobody questions the probity of San Francisco’s most prestigious financial concern, it is only good business to take proper precautions.”

  As he was talking, Tawny and Surplus both reached for the scales at once, collided, and almost sent them flying. Faces turned and hands reached out to catch them. But, in the fact, it was Surplus who saved the apparatus from disaster.

  “Oops,” Tawny said, coloring prettily.

  Swiftly, the assayist performed his tests. At their conclusion, he looked up from the ingot. “The finding is .925,” he said. “Sterling standard.”

  With an absent nod, Madam-Mayor Tresjolie acknowledged his judgment. Then she said, “The girl. How much do you want for her?”

  As one, Darger and Surplus turned. Then they subtly shifted position so that one stood to either side of Tawny. “Ms. Petticoats is our ward,” Darger said, ”and therefore, it goes without saying, not for sale. Also, yours is not an entirely reputable business for so innocent a child as she.”

  “Innocence is in high demand at my establishment. I’ll give you the silver ingot. To keep. Do with it as you wish.”

  “Believe me, madam. In not so very long, I shall consider silver ingots to be so much petty cash.”

  Master Bones watched the assay, including even the chaotic assembly of the trio’s equipment, with a beatific smile. Yet all the while, his attention kept straying to Tawny. Finally, he pursed his lips and said, “There might be a place in my club for your young friend. If you’d consider leasing her to me for, oh, let’s say a year, I’d gladly forego my twenty percent profit on this deal.” Turning to Tawny, he said, “Do not worry, my sweet. Under the influence of the zombie drugs you will feel nothing, and afterwards you will remember nothing. It will be as if none of it ever happened. Further, since you’d be paid a commission on each commercial encounter performed, you’d emerge with a respectable sum being held in trust for you.”

  Ignoring Tawny’s glare of outrage, Darger suavely said, “In strictest confidence, sir, we have already turned down a far better offer for her than yours today. But my partner and I would not part with our dear companion for any amount of money. She is to us a treasure beyond price.”

  “I’m ready,” the assayist said. “Where do you wish me to drill?”

  Darger airily waved a finger over the ingot and then, seemingly at random, touched a spot at the exact center of the bar. “Right there.”

  “I understand that on the street they call me the Pirate,” Jean-Nagin Lafitte said with quiet intensity. “This, however, is an insolence I will not tolerate to my face. Yes, I do chance to share a name with the legendary freebooter. But you will find that I have never committed an illegal act in my life.”

  “Nor do you today, sir!” Darger cried. “This is a strictly legitimate business arrangement.”

  “So I presume or I would not be here. Nevertheless, you can understand why I must take offense at having you and your clumsy confederates question the quality of my silver.”

  “Say no more, sir! We are all gentlemen here—save, of course, for Ms. Petticoats who is a gently-reared Christian orphan. If my word is good enough for you, then your word is good enough for me. We may dispose of the assay.” Darger coughed discreetly. “However, just for my own legal protection, in the absence of an assay, I shall require a notarized statement from you declaring that you will be satisfied with whatever quality of silver we return to you.”

  Pirate Lafitte’s stare would have melted iron. But it failed to wilt Darger’s pleasant smile. At last, he said, “Very well, run the assay.”

  Negligently, Darger spun a finger in the air. Down it came on the exact center of the bar. “There.”

  While the assayist was working, Pirate Lafitte said, “I was wondering if your Miss Petticoats might be available to—”

  “She is not for sale!” Darger said briskly. “Not for sale, not for rent, not for barter, not available for acquisition on any terms whatsoever. Period.”

  Looking irritated, Pirate Lafitte said, “I was going to ask if she might be interested in going hunting with me tomorrow. There is some interesting game to be found in the bayous.”

  “Nor is she available for social occasions.” Darger turned to the assayist. “Well, sir?”

  “Standard sterling,” the man said. “Yet again.”

  “I expected no less.”

  For the sake of appearances, after the assays were complete, the three swindlers sent the zombies with their lab equipment back to Mason Fema and went out to supper together. Following which, they took a genteel stroll about town. Tawny, who had been confined to her room while negotiations took place, was particularly glad of the latter. But it was with relief that Darger, Surplus, and Tawny saw the heavy bags waiting for them on the sitting room table of their suite. “Who shall do the honors?” Darger asked.

  “The lady, of course,” Surplus said with a little bow.

  Tawny curtsied and then, pushing aside a hidden latch at the bottom of one of the bags, slid out a silver ingot. From another bag, she slid out a second. Then, from a third, a third. A sigh of relief went up from all three conspirators at the sight of the silver glimmering in the lantern-light.

  “That was right smartly done, when y
ou changed the fake bars for the real ones,” Tawny said.

  Darger politely demurred. “No, it was the distraction that made the trick possible, and in this regard you were both exemplary. Even the assayist, who was present all three times you almost sent the equipment to the floor, suspected nothing.”

  “But tell me something,” Tawny said. “Why did you make the substitution before the assay, rather than after? The other way around, you wouldn’t have needed to have that little plug of silver in the middle for the sample to be drawn from. Just a silver-plated lead bar.”

  “We are dealing with suspicious people. This way, they first had the ingots confirmed as genuine and then saw that we came nowhere near them afterwards. The ingots are in a safety deposit box in a reputable bank, so to their minds there is not the least risk. All is on the up-and-up.”

  “But we’re not going to stop here, are we?” Tawny asked anxiously. “I do so want to work the black money scam.”

  “Have no fear, my lovely,” Surplus said, “this is only the beginning. But it serves as a kind of insurance policy for us. Even should the scheme go bad, we have already turned a solid profit.” He poured brandy into three small glasses and handed them around. “To whom shall we drink?”

  “To Madam-Mayor Tresjolie!” Darger said.

  They drank, and then Tawny said, “What do you make of her? Professionally, I mean.”

  “She is far shrewder than she would have you think,” Surplus replied. “But, as you are doubtless aware, the self-consciously shrewd are always the easiest to mislead.” He poured a second glass. “To Master Bones!”

  They drank. Tawny said, “And of him?”

  “He is more problematic,” Darger said. “A soft man with a brutal streak underneath his softness. In some ways he hardly seems human.”

  “Perhaps he has been sampling his own product?” Surplus suggested.