Nowhere: Volume II of the Collected Short Stories and Novellas of Ian R. MacLeod

by Ian R. MacLeod

  “Yes? Come in…”

  When he turns, he’s expecting another chimera servant. But it’s Thea Lorentz.

  This, too, is something they’d tried to prepare him for. But encountering her after so long is much less of a shock than he’s been expecting. Thea’s image is as ubiquitous as that of Marilyn Munroe or the Virgin Mary back on Lifeside, and she really hasn’t changed. She’s dressed in a loose-fitting shirt. Loafers and slacks. Hair tied back. No obvious evidence of any make-up. But the crisp white shirt with its rolled up cuffs shows her dark brown skin to perfection, and one lose strand of her tied-back hair plays teasingly at her sculpted neck. A tangle of silver bracelets slide on her wrist as she steps forward to embrace him. Her breasts are unbound and she still smells warmly of the patchouli she always used to favour. Everything about her feels exactly the same. But why not? After all, she was already perfect when she was alive.

  “Well…!” That warm blaze is still in her eyes, as well. “It really is you.”

  “I know I’m springing a huge surprise. Just turning up from out of nowhere like this.”

  “I can take these kind of surprises any day! And I hear it’s only been—what?— less than a week since you transferred. Everything must feel so very strange to you still.”

  It went without saying that his and Thea’s existences had headed off in different directions back on Lifeside. She, of course, had already been well on her way toward some or other kind of immortality when they’d lost touch. And he… Well, it was just one of those stupid lucky breaks. A short, ironic keyboard riff he’d written to help promote some old online performance thing—no, no, it was nothing she’d been involved in—had ended up being picked up many years later as the standard message-send fail signal on the global net. Yeah, that was the one. Of course, Thea knew it. Everyone, once they thought about it for a moment, did.

  “You know, Jon,” she says, her voice more measured now, “you’re the one person I thought would never choose to make this decision. None of us can pretend that being Farside isn’t a position of immense privilege, when most of the living can’t afford food, shelter, good health. You always were a man of principle, and I sometimes thought you’d just fallen to… Well, the same place that most performers fall, I suppose, which is no particular place at all. I even considered trying to find you and get in touch, offer…” She gestures around her. “Well, this. But you wouldn’t have taken it, would you? Not on those terms.”

  He shakes his head. In so many ways she still has him right. He detested—no, he quietly reminds himself—detests everything about this vast vampiric sham of a world that sucks life, hope and power from the living. But she hadn’t come to him, either, had she? Hadn’t offered what she now so casually calls this. For all her fame, for all her good works, for all the aid funds she sponsors and the good causes she promotes, Thea Lorentz and the rest of the dead have made no effort to extend their constituency beyond the very rich, and almost certainly never will. After all, why should they? Would the gods invite the merely mortal to join them on Mount Olympus?

  She smiles and steps close to him again. Weights both his hands in her own. “Most people I know, Jon—most of those I have to meet and talk to and deal with, and even those I have to call friends—they all think that I’m Thea Lorentz. Both Farside and Lifeside, it’s long been the same. But only you and a few very others really know who I am. You can’t imagine how precious and important is to have you here…”

  He stands gazing at the door after she’s left. Willing everything to dissolve, fade, crash, melt. But nothing changes. He’s still dead. He’s still standing here in this Farside room. Can still even breathe the faint patchouli of Thea’s scent. He finishes dressing—a tie, a jacket, the same supple leather shoes he arrived in—and heads out into the corridor.

  Elsinore really is big—and resolutely, heavily, emphatically, the ancient building it wishes to be. Cold gusts pass along its corridors. Heavy doors groan and creak. Of course, the delights of Farside are near-infinite. He’s passed through forests of mist and silver. Seen the vast, miles-wide back of some great island of a seabeast drift past when he was still out at sea. The dead can grow wings, sprout gills, spread roots into the soil and raise their arms and become trees. All these things are not only possible, but visibly, virtually, achievably real. But he thinks they still hanker after life, and all the things of life the living, for all their disadvantages, possess.

  He passes many fine-looking paintings as he descends the stairs. They have a Pre-Raphaelite feel, and from the little he knows of art, seem finely executed, but he doesn’t recognise any of them. Have these been created by virtual hands, in some virtual workshop, or have they simply sprung into existence? And what would happen if he took that sword which also hangs on display, and slashed it through a canvas? Would it be gone forever? Almost certainly not. One thing he knows for sure about the Farside’s vast database is that it’s endlessly backed up, scattered, diffused and re-collated across many secure and heavily armed vaults back in what’s left of the world of the living. There are very few guaranteed ways of destroying any of it, least of all the dead.

  Further down, there are holo-images, all done in stylish black and white. Somehow, even in a castle, they don’t even look out of place. Thea, as always, looks like she’s stepped out of a fashion-shoot. The dying jungle suits her. As does this war-zone, and this flooded hospital, and this burnt-out shanty town. The kids, and it is mostly kids, who surround her with their pot bellies and missing limbs, somehow manage to absorb a little of her glamour. On these famous trips of hers back to view the suffering living, she makes an incredibly beautiful ghost.

  Two big fires burn in Elsinore’s great hall, and there’s a long table for dinner, and the heads of many real and mythic creatures loom upon the walls. Basilisk, boar, unicorn… Hardly noticing the chimera servant who rakes his chair out for him, Northover sits down. Thea’s space at the top of the table is still empty.

  In this Valhalla where the lucky, eternal dead feast forever, what strikes Northover most strongly is the sight of Sam Bartleby sitting beside Thea’s vacant chair. Not that he doesn’t know that the man has been part of what’s termed Thea Lorentz’s inner circle for more than a decade. But, even when they were all still alive and working together on Bard On Wheels, he’d never been able to understand why she put up with him. Of course, Bartleby made his fortune with those ridiculous action virtuals, but the producers deepened his voice so much, and enhanced his body so ridiculously, that it was a wonder to Northover that they bothered to use him at all. Now, though, he’s chosen to bulk himself out and cut his hair in a Roman fringe. He senses Northover’s gaze, and raises his glass, and gives an ironic nod. He still has the self-regarding manner of someone who thinks themselves far better looking, not to mention cleverer, than they actually are.

  Few of the dead, though, choose to be beautiful. Most elect for the look that expresses themselves at what they thought of as the most fruitful and self-expressive period of their lives. Amongst people this wealthy, this often equates to late middle age. The fat, the bald, the matronly and the downright ugly rub shoulders, secure in the knowledge that they can become young and beautiful again whenever they wish.

  “So? What are you here for?”

  The woman beside him already seems flushed from the wine, and has a homely face and a dimpled smile, although she sports pointed teeth, elfin ears and her eyes are cattish slots.

  “For?”

  “Name’s Wilhelmina Howard. People just call me Will…” She offers him a claw-nailed hand to shake. “Made my money doing windfarm recycling in the non-federal states. All that lovely superconductor and copper we need right here to keep our power supplies as they should be. Not that we ever had much of a presence in England, which I’m guessing is where you were from…?”

  He gives a guarded nod.

  “But isn’t it just so great to be here at Elsinore? Such a privilege. Thea’s everything people say she is, is
n’t she, and then a whole lot more as well? Such compassion, and all the marvellous things she’s done! Still, I know she’s invited me here because she wants to get hold of some of my money. Give back a little of what we’ve taken an’ all. Not that I won’t give. That’s for sure. Those poor souls back on Lifeside. We really have to do something, don’t we, all of us…?”

  “To be honest, I’m here because used to work with Thea. Back when we were both alive.”

  “So, does that make you an actor?” Wilhelmina’s looking at him more closely now. Her slot pupils have widened. “Should I recognise you? Were you in any of the famous—”

  “No, no.” As if in defeat, he holds up a hand. Another chance to roll out his story. More a musician, a keyboard player, although there wasn’t much he hadn’t turned his hand to over the years. Master of many trades, and what have you—at least, until that message fail signal came along.

  “So, pretty much a lucky break,” murmurs this ex take-no-shit businesswoman who died and became a fat elf, “rather than a any kind of lifetime endeavour…?”

  Then Thea enters the hall, and she’s changed into something more purposefully elegant—a light grey dress that shows her fine breasts and shoulders without seeming immodest—and her hair is differently done, and Northover understands all the more why most of the dead make no attempt to be beautiful. After all, how could they, when Thea Lorentz does it so unassailably well? She stands waiting for a moment as if expectant silence hasn’t already fallen, then says few phrases about how pleased she is to have so many charming and interesting guests. Applause follows. Just as she used to do for many an encore, Thea nods and smiles and looks genuinely touched.

  The rest of the evening at Elsinore passes in a blur of amazing food and superb wine, all served with the kind of discreet inevitability which Northover has decided only chimeras are capable of. Just like Wilhelmina, everyone wants to know who he’s with, or for, or from. The story about that jingle works perfectly; many even claim to have heard of him and his success. Their curiosity only increases when he explains his and Thea’s friendship. After all, he could be the route of special access to her famously compassionate ear.

  There’s about twenty guests here at Elsinore tonight, all told, if you don’t count the several hundred chimeras, which of course no one does. Most of the dead, if you look at them closely enough, have adorned themselves with small eccentricities; a forked tongue here, an extra finger there, a crimson badger-stripe of hair. Some are new to each other, but the interactions flow on easy rails. Genuine fame itself is rare here—after all, entertainment has long been a cheapened currency—but there’s a relaxed feeling-out between strangers in the knowledge that some shared acquaintance or interest will soon be reached. Wealth always was an exclusive club, and it’s even more exclusive here.

  Much of the talk is of new Lifeside investment. Viral re-programming of food crops, all kinds of nano-engineering, weather, flood and even birth control—although the last strikes Northover as odd, considering how rapidly the human population is decreasing—and every other kind of plan imaginable to make the earth a place worth living in again is discussed. Many of these schemes, he soon realises, would be mutually incompatible, and potentially incredibly destructive, and all are about making money.

  Cigars are lit after the cheeses and sorbets. Rare, exquisite whiskeys are poured. Just like everyone else, he can’t help but keep glancing at Thea. She still has that way of seeming part of the crowd yet somehow apart—or above—it. She always had been a master of managing social occasions, even those rowdy parties they’d hosted back in the day. A few words, a calming hand and smile, and even the most annoying drunk would agree that it was time they took a taxi. For all her gifts as a performer, her true moments of transcendent success were at the lunches, the less-than-chance-encounters, the launch parties. Even her put-downs or betrayals left you feeling grateful.

  Everything Farside is so spectacularly different, yet so little about her has changed. The one thing he does notice, though, is her habit of toying with those silver bangles she’s still wearing on her left wrist. Then, at what feels like precisely the right moment, and thus fractionally before anyone expects, she stands up and taps her wineglass to say a few more words. From anyone else’s lips, they would sound like vague expressions of pointless hope. But, coming from her, it’s hard not to be stirred.

  Then, with a bow, a nod, and what Northover was almost sure is a small conspiratorial blink in his direction—which somehow seems to acknowledge the inherent falsity of what she has just done, but also the absolute need for it—she’s gone from the hall, and the air suddenly seems stale. He stands up and grabs at the tilt of his chair before a chimera servant can get to it. He feels extraordinarily tired, and more than a little drunk.

  In search of some air, he follows a stairway that winds up and up. He steps out high on the battlements. He hears feminine chuckles. Around a corner, shadows tussle. He catches the starlit glimpse of a bared breast, and turns the other way. It’s near-freezing up out on these battlements. Clouds cut ragged by a blazing sickle moon. Northover leans over and touches the winding crown of his Rolex watch and studies the distant lace of waves. Then, glancing back, he thinks he sees another figure behind him. Not the lovers, certainly. This shape bulks far larger, and is alone. Yet the dim outlines of the battlement gleam though it. A malfunction? A premonition? A genuine ghost? But then, as Northover moves, the figure moves with him, and he realises that he’s seeing nothing but his own shadow thrown by the moon.

  He dreams that night that he’s alive again, but no longer the young and hopeful man he once was. He’s mad old Northy. Living, if you call it living, so high up in the commune tower that no one else bothers him much, and with nothing but old piano he’s somehow managed to restore for company. Back in his old body, as well, with its old aches, fatigues and irritations. But for once, it isn’t raining, and frail sparks of sunlight cling to shattered glass in the ruined rooms, and the whole flooded, once-great city of London is almost beautiful, far below.

  Then, looking back, he sees a figure standing the far end of the corridor that leads through rubble to the core stairs. They come up sometimes, do the kids. They taunt him and try to steal his last few precious things. Northy swears and lumbers forward, grabbing an old broom. But the kid doesn’t curse or throw things. Neither does he turn and run, although it looks as if he’s come up here alone.

  “You’re Northy, aren’t you?” the boy called Haru says, his voice an adolescent squawk.

  He awakes with a start to new light, good health, comforting warmth. A sense, just as he opens his eyes and knowledge and who and what he is returns, that the door to his room has just clicked shut. He’d closed the curtains here in the Willow Room in Elsinore, as well, and now they open. And the fire grate has been cleared, the applewood logs restocked. He reaches quickly for his Rolex, and begins to relax as he slips it on. The servants, the chimeras, will have been trained, programmed, to perform their work near-invisibly, and silently.

  He showers again. He meets the gaze of his own eyes in the mirror as he shaves. Whatever view there might be from his windows is hidden in a mist so thick that the world beyond could be the blank screen of some old computer from his youth. The route to breakfast is signalled by conversation and a stream of guests. The hall is smaller than the one they were in last night, but still large enough. A big fire crackles in a soot-stained hearth, but stream rises from the food as cold air wafts in through the open doors.

  Dogs are barking in the main courtyard. Horses are being led out. Elsinore’s battlements and towers hover like ghosts in the blanketing fog. People are milling, many wearing thick gauntlets, leather helmets and what look like padded vests and kilts. The horses are big, beautifully groomed but convincingly skittish in the way that Northover surmises expensively pedigreed beasts are. Or were. Curious, he goes over to one as a chimera stable boy fusses with its saddle and reins.

  The very essence of equine
haughtiness, the creature tosses its head and does that lip-blubber thing horses do. Everything about this creature is impressive. The flare of its nostrils. The deep, clean, horsey smell. Even, when he looks down and under, the impressive, seemingly part-swollen heft of its horsey cock.

  “Pretty spectacular, isn’t he?”

  Northover finds that Sam Bartleby is standing beside him. Dressed as if for battle, and holding a silver goblet of something steaming and red. Even his voice is bigger and deeper than it was. The weird thing is, he seems more like Sam Bartleby than the living Sam Bartleby ever did. Even in those stupid action virtuals.

  “His name’s Aleph—means alpha, of course, or the first. You may have heard of him. He won, yes didn’t you…?” By now, Bartleby’s murmuring into the beast’s neck. “The last ever Grand Steeple de Paris.”

  Slowly, Northover nods. The process of transfer is incredibly expensive, but there’s no reason in principle why creatures other than humans can’t join Farside’s exclusive club. The dead are bound to want the most prestigious and expensive toys. So, why not the trapped, transferred consciousness of a multi-million dollar racehorse?

  “You don’t ride, do you?” Bartleby, still fondling Aleph—who, Northover notices, is now displaying an even more impressive erection—asks.

  “It wasn’t something I ever got around to.”

  “But you’ve got plenty of time now, and there a few things better than a day out hunting in the forest. Suggest you start with one of the lesser, easier, mounts over there, and work your way up to a real beast like this. Perhaps that pretty roan? Even then, though, you’ll have to put up with a fair few falls. Although, if you really want to cheat and bend the rules, and know the right people, there are shortcuts…”