Cyberpunk

by Victoria Blake

  Sutherland shrugged. “You’ll feel better.”

  After Jefferson left, Rice half expected a reprimand. Instead, Sutherland

  said, “You seem to have a tremendous faith in the project.”

  “Oh, cheer up,” Rice said. “You’ve been spending too much time with these

  politicals. Believe me, this is a simple time, with simple people. Sure, Jefferson was a little ticked off, but he’ll come around. Relax!”

  Rice found Mozart clearing tables in the main dining hall of the Hohensalzburg

  Castle. In his faded jeans, camo jacket, and mirrored sunglasses, he might

  almost have passed for a teenager from Rice’s time.

  “Wolfgang!” Rice called to him. “How’s the new job?”

  Mozart set a stack of dishes aside and ran his hands over his short-cropped

  hair. “Wolf,” he said. “Call me Wolf, okay? Sounds more . . . modern, you know?

  But yes, I really want to thank you for everything you have done for me. The

  tapes, the history books, this job—it is so wonderful just to be around here.”

  His English, Rice noticed, had improved remarkably in the last three weeks.

  “You still living in the city?”

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  BRUCE STERLING AND LEWIS SHINER

  “Yes, but I have my own place now. You are coming to the gig tonight?”

  “Sure,” Rice said. “Why don’t you finish up around here, I’ll go change, and

  then we can go out for some sachertorte, okay? We’ll make a night of it.”

  Rice dressed carefully, wearing mesh body armor under his velvet coat and

  knee britches. He crammed his pockets with giveaway consumer goods, then

  met Mozart by a rear door.

  Security had been stepped up around the castle, and floodlights swept the

  sky. Rice sensed a new tension in the festive abandon of the crowds downtown.

  Like everyone else from his time, he towered over the locals; even incognito

  he felt dangerously conspicuous.

  Within the club Rice faded into the darkness and relaxed. The place had

  been converted from the lower half of some young aristo’s townhouse;

  protruding bricks still marked the lines of the old walls. The patrons were

  locals, mostly, dressed in any Realtime garments they could scavenge. Rice

  even saw one kid wearing a pair of beige silk panties on his head.

  Mozart took the stage. Minuet-like guitar arpeggios screamed over

  sequenced choral motifs. Stacks of amps blasted synthesizer riffs lifted from a tape of K-Tel pop hits. The howling audience showered Mozart with confetti

  stripped from the club’s hand-painted wallpaper.

  Afterward Mozart smoked a joint of Turkish hash and asked Rice about

  the future.

  “Mine, you mean?” Rice said. “You wouldn’t believe it. Six billion people,

  and nobody has to work if they don’t want to. Five-hundred-channel TV in

  every house. Cars, helicopters, clothes that would knock your eyes out.

  Plenty of easy sex. You want music? You could have your own recording

  studio. It’d make your gear on stage look like a goddamned clavichord.”

  “Really? I would give anything to see that. I can’t understand why you

  would leave.”

  Rice shrugged. “So I’m giving up maybe fifteen years. When I get back, it’s

  the best of everything. Anything I want.”

  “Fifteen years?”

  “Yeah. You got to understand how the portal works. Right now it’s as big

  around as you are tall, just big enough for a phone cable and a pipeline full of oil, maybe the odd bag of mail, heading for Realtime. To make it any bigger,

  like to move people or equipment through, is expensive as hell. So expensive

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  MOZART IN MIRRORSHADES

  they only do it twice, at the beginning and the end of the project. So, yeah, I guess we’re stuck here.”

  Rice coughed harshly and drank off his glass. That Ottoman Empire hash

  had untied his mental shoelaces. Here he was opening up to Mozart, making

  the kid want to emigrate, and there was no way in hell Rice could get him a

  Green Card. Not with all the millions that wanted a free ride into the

  future—billions, if you counted the other projects, like the Roman Empire or

  New Kingdom Egypt.

  “But I’m really glad to be here,” Rice said. “It’s like . . . like shuffling the deck of history. You never know what’ll come up next.” Rice passed the joint

  to one of Mozart’s groupies, Antonia something-or-other. “This is a great

  time to be alive. Look at you. You’re doing okay, aren’t you?” He leaned across the table, in the grip of a sudden sincerity. “I mean, it’s okay, right? It’s not like you hate all of us for fucking up your world or anything?”

  “Are you making a joke? You are looking at the hero of Salzburg. In fact,

  your Mr. Parker is supposed to make a tape of my last set tonight. Soon all of

  Europe will know of me!” Someone shouted at Mozart, in German, from

  across the club. Mozart glanced up and gestured cryptically. “Be cool, man.”

  He turned back to Rice. “You can see that I am doing fine.”

  “Sutherland, she worries about stuff like all those symphonies you’re never

  going to write.”

  “Bullshit! I don’t want to write symphonies. I can listen to them any time I

  want! Who is this Sutherland? Is she your girlfriend?”

  “No. She goes for the locals. Danton, Robespierre, like that. How about

  you? You got anybody?”

  “Nobody special. Not since I was a kid.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Well, when I was about six I was at Maria Theresa’s court. I used to play

  with her daughter—Maria Antonia. Marie Antoinette she calls herself

  now. The most beautiful girl of the age. We used to play duets. We made a

  joke that we would be married, but she went off to France with that swine,

  Louis.”

  “Goddamn,” Rice said. “This is really amazing. You know, she’s practically

  a legend where I come from. They cut her head off in the French Revolution

  for throwing too many parties.”

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  BRUCE STERLING AND LEWIS SHINER

  “No they didn’t . . .”

  “That was our French Revolution,” Rice said. “Yours was a lot less messy.”

  “You should go see her, if you’re that interested. Surely she owes you a favor

  for saving her life.”

  Before Rice could answer, Parker arrived at their table, surrounded by ex-

  ladies-in-waiting in spandex capris and sequined tube tops. “Hey, Rice!”

  Parker shouted, serenely anachronistic in a glitter T-shirt and black leather

  jeans. “Where did you get those unhip threads? Come on, let’s party!”

  Rice watched as the girls crowded around the table and gnawed the corks

  out of a crate of champagne. As short, fat, and repulsive as Parker might be,

  they would gladly knife one another for a chance to sleep in his clean sheets

  and raid his medicine cabinet.

  “No, thanks,” Rice said, untangling himself from the miles of wire connected

  to Parker’s recording gear.

  The image of Marie Antoinette had seized him and would not let go.

  Rice sat naked on the edge of the canopied bed, shivering a little in the air

  conditioning. Past the jutting window unit, through clouded panes of

  eighteenth-century glass, he saw a lush, green landscape sprinkled with tiny

  waterfalls.

  At ground level, a
garden crew of former aristos in blue denim overalls

  trimmed weeds under the bored supervision of a peasant guard. The guard,

  clothed head to foot in camouflage except for a tricolor cockade on his fatigue cap, chewed gum and toyed with the strap of his cheap plastic machine gun.

  The gardens of Petit Trianon, like Versailles itself, were treasures deserving

  the best of care. They belonged to the Nation, since they were too large to be

  crammed through a time portal.

  Marie Antoinette sprawled across the bed’s expanse of pink satin, wearing

  a scrap of black-lace underwear and leafing through an issue of Vogue. The bedroom’s walls were crowded with Boucher canvases: acres of pert silky

  rumps, pink haunches, knowingly pursed lips. Rice looked dazedly from the

  portrait of Louise O’Morphy, kittenishly sprawled on a divan, to the sleek,

  creamy expanse of Toinette’s back and thighs. He took a deep, exhausted

  breath. “Man,” he said, “that guy could really paint.”

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  MOZART IN MIRRORSHADES

  Toinette cracked off a square of Hershey’s chocolate and pointed to the

  magazine. “I want the leather bikini,” she said. “Always, when I am a girl, my

  goddamn mother, she keep me in the goddamn corsets. She think my what-

  you-call, my shoulder blade sticks out too much.”

  Rice leaned back across her solid thighs and patted her bottom

  reassuringly. He felt wonderfully stupid; a week and a half of obsessive

  carnality had reduced him to a euphoric animal “Forget your mother, baby.

  You’re with me now. You want ze goddamn leather bikini, I get it for you.”

  Toinette licked chocolate from her fingertips. “Tomorrow we go out to the

  cottage, okay, man? We dress up like the peasants and make love in the

  hedges like noble savages.”

  Rice hesitated. His weekend furlough to Paris had stretched into a week

  and a half; by now security would be looking for him. To hell with them, he

  thought. “Great,” he said. “I’ll phone us up a picnic lunch. Foie gras and

  truffles, maybe some terrapin—” Toinette pouted. “I want the modem food.

  The pizza and burritos and the chicken fried.” When Rice shrugged, she

  threw her arms around his neck. “You love me, Rice?”

  “Love you? Baby, I love the very idea of you.” He was drunk on history out of control, careening under him like some great black motorcycle of the

  imagination. When he thought of Paris, take-out quiche-to-go stores springing

  up where guillotines might have been, a six-year-old Napoleon munching

  Dubble Bubble in Corsica, he felt like the archangel Michael on speed.

  Megalomania, he knew, was an occupational hazard. But he’d get back to

  work soon enough, in just a few more days . . .

  The phone rang. Rice burrowed into a plush house robe formerly owned

  by Louis XVI. Louis wouldn’t mind; he was now a happily divorced

  locksmith in Nice.

  Mozart’s face appeared on the phone’s tiny screen. “Hey, man, where

  are you?”

  “France,” Rice said vaguely. “What’s up?”

  “Trouble, man. Sutherland flipped out, and they’ve got her sedated. At

  least six key people have gone over the hill, counting you.” Mozart’s voice

  had only the faintest trace of accent left.

  “Hey, I’m not over the hill. I’ll be back in just a couple days. We’ve got, what, thirty other people in Northern Europe? If you’re worried about the quotas—”

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  BRUCE STERLING AND LEWIS SHINER

  “Fuck the quotas. This is serious. There’s uprisings. Comanches raising hell

  on the rigs in Texas. Labor strikes in London and Vienna. Realtime is pissed.

  They’re talking about pulling us out.”

  “What?” Now he was alarmed.

  “Yeah. Word came down the line today. They say you guys let this whole

  operation get sloppy. Too much contamination, too much fraternization.

  Sutherland made a lot of trouble with the locals before she got found out.

  She was organizing the Masonistas for some kind of passive resistance and

  God knows what else.”

  “Shit.” The fucking politicals had screwed it up again. It wasn’t enough

  that he’d busted ass getting the plant up and online; now he had to clean up

  after Sutherland. He glared at Mozart. “Speaking of fraternization, what’s all

  this we stuff? What the hell are you doing calling me?”

  Mozart paled. “Just trying to help. I got a job in communications now.”

  “That takes a Green Card. Where the hell did you get that?”

  “Uh, listen, man, I got to go. Get back here, will you? We need you.”

  Mozart’s eyes flickered, looking past Rice’s shoulder. “You can bring your

  little time-bunny along if you want. But hurry.”

  “I . . . oh, shit, okay,” Rice said.

  Rice’s hovercar huffed along at a steady 80 kph, blasting clouds of dust from

  the deeply rutted highway. They were near the Bavarian border. Ragged Alps

  jutted into the sky over radiant green meadows, tiny picturesque farmhouses,

  and clear, vivid streams of melted snow.

  They’d just had their first argument. Toinette had asked for a Green Card,

  and Rice had told her he couldn’t do it. He offered her a Gray Card instead,

  that would get her from one branch of time to another without letting her

  visit Realtime. He knew he’d be reassigned if the project pulled out, and he

  wanted to take her with him. He wanted to do the decent thing, not leave

  her behind in a world without Hersheys and Vogues.

  But she wasn’t having any of it. After a few kilometers of weighty silence

  she started to squirm. “I have to pee,” she said finally. “Pull over by the

  goddamn trees.”

  “Okay,” Rice said. “Okay.”

  044

  MOZART IN MIRRORSHADES

  He cut the fans and whirred to a stop. A herd of brindled cattle spooked off

  with a clank of cowbells. The road was deserted.

  Rice got out and stretched, watching Toinette climb a wooden stile and

  walk toward a stand of trees.

  “What’s the deal?” Rice yelled. “There’s nobody around. Get on with it!”

  A dozen men burst up from the cover of a ditch and rushed him. In an

  instant they’d surrounded him, leveling flintlock pistols. They wore tricornes

  and wigs and lace-cuffed highwayman’s coats; black domino masks hid their

  faces. “What the fuck is this?” Rice asked, amazed. “Mardi Gras?”

  The leader ripped off his mask and bowed ironically. His handsome Teutonic

  features were powdered, his lips rouged. “I am Count Axel Ferson. Servant,

  sir.”

  Rice knew the name; Ferson had been Toinette’s lover before the revolution.

  “Look, Count, maybe you’re a little upset about Toinette, but I’m sure we can

  make a deal. Wouldn’t you really rather have a color TV?”

  “Spare us your satanic blandishments, sir!” Ferson roared. “I would not soil

  my hands on the collaborationist cow. We are the Freemason Liberation

  Front!”

  “Christ,” Rice said. “You can’t possibly be serious. Are you taking on the

  project with these popguns?”

  “We are aware of your advantage in armaments, sir. This is why we have

  made you our hostage.” He spoke to the others in German. They tied Rice’s
>
  hands and hustled him into the back of a horse-drawn wagon that had

  clopped out of the woods.

  “Can’t we at least take the car?” Rice asked. Glancing back, he saw Toinette

  sitting dejectedly in the road by the hovercraft.

  “We reject your machines,” Ferson said. “They are one more facet of your

  godlessness. Soon we will drive you back to hell, from whence you came!”

  “With what? Broomsticks?” Rice sat up in the back of the wagon, ignoring

  the stink of manure and rotting hay. “Don’t mistake our kindness for

  weakness. If they send the Gray Card Army through that portal, there won’t

  be enough left of you to fill an ashtray.”

  “We are prepared to sacrifice! Each day thousands flock to our worldwide

  movement, under the banner of the All-Seeing Eye! We shall reclaim our

  destiny! The destiny you have stolen from us!”

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  BRUCE STERLING AND LEWIS SHINER

  “Your destiny?” Rice was aghast. “Listen, Count, you ever hear of guillotines?”

  “I wish to hear no more of your machines.” Ferson gestured to a subordinate.

  “Gag him.”

  They hauled Rice to a farmhouse outside Salzburg. During fifteen bone-

  jarring hours in the wagon he thought of nothing but Toinette’s betrayal. If

  he’d promised her the Green Card, would she still have led him into the

  ambush? That card was the only thing she wanted, but how could the

  Masonistas get her one?

  Rice’s guards paced restlessly in front of the windows, their boots

  squeaking on the loosely pegged floorboards. From their constant references

  to Salzburg he gathered that some kind of siege was in progress.

  Nobody had shown up to negotiate Rice’s release, and the Masonistas were

  getting nervous. If he could just gnaw through his gag, Rice was sure he’d be

  able to talk some sense into them.

  He heard a distant drone, building slowly to a roar. Four of the men ran

  outside, leaving a single guard at the open door. Rice squirmed in his bonds and tried to sit up.

  Suddenly the clapboards above his head were blasted to splinters by heavy

  machine-gun fire. Grenades whumped in front of the house, and the windows

  exploded in a gush of black smoke. A choking Masonista lifted his flintlock

  at Rice. Before he could pull the trigger a burst of gunfire threw the terrorist against the wall.

  A short, heavyset man in flak jacket and leather pants stalked into the