New Worlds

by Edited By David Garnett

  Serena not only gave Persephone the number of her doctor, she offered to drive her there next morning.

  Jed sat in the back of the car. His eyes reflected frightened and small in the rear-view mirror.

  “Peter looked just like that when I took him in,” Serena told Persephone, while they waited at some traffic lights. “It’s almost as if they know what’s going to happen, isn’t it?”

  “I feel guilty.”

  “Why? He’ll be liberated from all those terrible urges.”

  “Yeah. But I won’t.”

  ~ * ~

  Dr. Stoughton welcomed Persephone into her office and had Jed sit with his back to the door that led onto the surgery. When the papers had been signed and the patient led away, Persephone joined Serena again, and Dr. Stoughton’s secretary brought the women coffee and biscuits. Moments later she reappeared with a trolley, carrying a large brown cardboard box which emitted scrabbling sounds.

  “Dr. Stoughton thought you might be interested in these,” the secretary drawled. “Law was finally repealed yesterday afternoon. You can keep dogs now so long as they’re properly checked out.”

  “And these must be,” Serena said, lifting one of the golden fur bundles out of the box and rubbing it against her cheek. “You know, Persephone, Dr. Stoughton specialised in dogs before the plague robbed half her trade.”

  Persephone blocked her mind to the anguished pleas drifting in from the surgery and replied levelly, “She must be very pleased that things have changed again. Are these really Labradors? Wow. I haven’t seen one of these since I was a girl.”

  The dogs were expensive, but it would be several years before they were no longer a rarity. And the wonderful thing was that while they were still rare, the dogs wouldn’t know it and try to take advantage of the situation as Jed and Peter had. Serena bought two. She sighed that she would have to put her new pool on hold for another year to afford this latest luxury, but since his operation Peter hadn’t been much good for anything but gardening.

  “He can walk them,” Serena said. “Might help keep some of that fat off. And you should get one,” she told Persephone. “Jed will need the extra exercise too once he’s been done.”

  Persephone chose her new pet from the five that remained in the box and handed over her credit card. Dr. Stoughton emerged from the surgery, peeling off her gloves as she walked. She had a delicate smattering of blood on the front of her white overall. Persephone couldn’t help wincing at the thought of the needle going into her poor boy’s behind.

  “How long is he going to be in recovery?” asked Serena.

  “Recovery?” Dr. Stoughton looked surprised. “Ms. Rayfield can take him with her right away if she really wants to, but I thought she might like me to sort things out from here.”

  Persephone nodded. “That’s probably a better idea.”

  Serena looked confused.

  Persephone sniffed back a tear and nuzzled her nose in the tiny Labrador’s fur. “I don’t believe in letting dumb creatures suffer,” she explained to her friend. “I’m afraid poor Jed’s had his last walk.”

  ~ * ~

  On the slow drive home, Persephone reassured Serena that the dog would go some way to helping her get over the loss of Jed’s company. A far greater loss would be Angela’s companionship. Persephone still couldn’t quite believe that twenty years’ friendship could have been lost in a flash of deception and jealousy.

  “What did you do to her?” Serena asked insistently. “You’re so soft on people who upset you.”

  “No,” said Persephone. “I think I made her sorry.” She had a sudden, clear memory of Angela kneeling naked on the bed, hands clasped in prayer. Jed was cowering behind her like a cur, begging for Angela’s life and yet using it to shield his own.

  “I’ll give you anything you want,” Angela had pleaded again and again. Persephone’s eyes misted over with tears.

  “Okay,” Serena said. “You don’t have to tell me what went on between you guys, if you don’t want to. Say, these dogs are just too cute. I think I’m going to call this one Peter Two. How about yours?”

  “Jed, I suppose,” said Persephone. “It’ll save me having to get used to another name about the house.”

  The traffic had ground to a standstill again. Serena took hold of the wide lapels of her shirt and used them to fan her neck. “Phew. All this heat used to make me desperate for sex when I got home. Aren’t you going to miss that?”

  Persephone suddenly realised she had never thought of it as sex. She had hoped that she and Jed were “making love.” Sex was what he had been doing with Angela that terrible afternoon. The tight buttocks bobbed frantically over the white thighs once more. She had made Jed strip the filthy bed and bury the sheets in the garden. Angela thought those sheets were going to be her shroud.

  “I’ll give you anything you want,” she had begged one last time. “The most valuable thing I own.”

  Back in the car, Serena continued, “I could have lived on three lots of sex a day. I never even thought about chocolate while Peter was in full working order. Guess I’m going to have to buy one of those virtual reality sex things now. It’s not the same, but I’m not going through all that heartache with a man again. No way. You want to go halves on something with me?”

  Persephone smiled at last. “No thanks, Serena. You know I’m not too good at sharing.”

  Besides, Persephone had very good reason to believe that she would soon be receiving a luxury RTI. Low mileage. Fully accessorised. And just one careless prior owner.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  A NIGHT ON BARE MOUNTAIN

  BY GRAHAM CHARNOCK

  The world ends at midnight, Gance. Have you heard?

  Yes, it’s me—Venn. Still crazy after all these years. Still singing old forgotten songs to myself.

  Remember when we played Trivial Pursuit in that brothel in Cairo, next to a command bunker? Scuds were flying overhead. The fundamentalists had broken the precise positioning code on the Axis navsat network and any moment we expected one almighty mother of a portion to be delivered to our pie.

  There were four of us. Me and you lot—Cleo, Athene and you, Gance. The three weird sisters, as I called you, who tangled the skeins of weird web worlds together. The mistress seamstresses.

  God, what a night that was.

  Thumpety thump overhead. Crackety crack in our bones. And the clickety click of the rolling and tumbling dice. We may or may not have been naked, sprawled on silk sheets. Probably not—false memories of those fine times abound—although I seem to remember flesh, bare and white, tracked with reworked scars, moulded over with collagen, new maps on ancient contours. I still had some skin left in those days.

  And I remember that as we settled over that stupid board I threw a six and moved onto movies.

  Question to Cleo, first on the right:

  “Which novel about vampirism was filmed twice, first starring Vincent Price, and later Charlton Heston?”

  Cleo giggled and drew her pretty dimpled knees together. She didn’t have a clue. Poor clueless Cleo, but God she was sexy. I was hasty, intemperate, wired, as always, passing over sex to try to get at the truth.

  Quick, Cleo!

  You’ve got to be quick.

  Snap! Really quick.

  Bop!

  Stab and jab. Float like a butterfly but sting like a bee.

  Come on! Quick, girl!

  No, you’re too slow, you’re dead already. You’ve got to think faster than a speeding bullet if you want to stay in this game. Think on your feet. No, think on your keypad, think on the chill platinum tags of your neural implant, that thing at the back of your ear you scratch with the same degree of neurotic affectation as a soppy schoolgirl pulling at the tags of her untidy hair. Think on the slim needles of steel you keep curled beneath your fingertips, grafted there by the good Dr Whatsisname. If you’re not quick you’re dead, and your name will be legion. You will be one of the fallen angels an
d not a Cairo Baby. No, nevermore.

  I was trying to give her a clue, but she took it the wrong way and burst out crying. The rest of us cuddled her. Gance, you scolded me for being stupid. We kissed, I remember. Athene poured herself a drink and stood apart from us, softly scouring her nails against the breeze-blocks that formed the wall, as if she were sharpening them up in anticipation of some act of vengeance.

  ~ * ~

  The Scuds poured down. Any one of them could have wiped us out, in the middle of our inconsequential game, with so many questions left unanswered. What a way to die. I thought at the time there must be a better one, but it’s taken me this long to figure it out.

  ~ * ~

  Gance, these are our good days but they are running out. Our history lesson for today is on how history lessens, and I’m sending out this message to you, Gance, because I’m alone, and I need to know if this is really how it ends, with all of us separated forever.

  I don’t mean this conjunction of the planets they’re all talking about, which is supposed to pull out all the nails that hold the continuum together but has so far simply pulled every prophet of doom out of the woodwork. All the planets and their satellites in line for the first time in thirty million years and that big comet, Alcephus, steaming through the middle of it all precisely on the stroke of twelve. Rubbish, Gance. I can’t rely on some shoddy piece of cheap cosmic clockwork to do the job for me.

  Are you still my Cairo Baby? God, I hope so—I could use your needles now. My body is in its last passage towards something spectacular. My body is a comet, its outer skin burning off as it Tuttles back to Earth after its latest trip around the cosmos. I burn, baby. I am Alcephus. I need your cool relief.

  Here’s a tale. There was this bee buzzing around my virtual rose. He was slow and I zapped him. I’m not too well-coordinated these days, but a friend of mine made me this headset and all I had to do was roll my one remaining eye in its socket and that did it. Trouble was the virtual hand of God only caught him a glancing blow that half crushed him—his abdomen was split and squashed, it was hanging off his thorax by the slimmest thread, a strand of neural tissue connecting his brain to his sting, his nose to his arse. He still had some kind of information flow, triggering and firing his crushed synapses, but he was damaged. Still he buzzed around the rose. He didn’t even know it was mid-winter in the virtual latitude I’d constructed for him and that the rose was just a dead calyx, a memory of summer. He just didn’t know he was out of the game, babe, but he carried on.

  I know we’re all damaged, one way or another, Gance. But we have to carry on. Don’t we?

  Which novel about vampirism?

  None of you knew the answer years ago in that bunker. I’ll run it past you one more time, and here’s a clue, think God, the Bible. “My name is legion: for we are many.” Gospel according to St. Mark, 5:9.

  I can imagine you scratching you head, Gance, just like then. Maybe you think I’ve found religion in these final terminal days as the old clock clicks over? It’s like we’re riding in Nostradamus’s taxi, and God only knows if we’ll be able to find the fare at the end of the ride.

  But there is no God, babe, unless it’s me.

  Time’s up.

  I know the answer still eludes you.

  The big gong has just gonged. The audience is going Aaaaahhhh with that sad dying fall as the chick in the net stockings and high heels takes your arm to lead you into the wings, simpering that stupid smile at you all the while with those gleaming teeth.

  Why did God give primates an opposable thumb and perfect teeth? So they could pick and grin.

  You’re a loser, babe, so why don’t I kill you?

  I Am Legend, for God’s sake, by Richard Matheson! They filmed it first as The Last Man On Earth. That was with Vincent Price, and then they did it again in 1971 with Charlton Heston, but they called it The Omega Man. It’s one of the great ideas—vampirism is nothing supernatural, it’s a disease that’s all, you know, like TB, or CJD, or Ebola or Michelangelo. Oh yes, very like Michelangelo because it’s ubiquitous; they’re a new different breed of humanity and everybody’s joined the club. Except for Charlton Heston, who’s immune. Poor sod. Poor silly sod.

  You owe me a forfeit from that night years ago, you and your sisters, and I’m calling it in. I’m throwing a party. I don’t anticipate it will go on much after midnight.

  There’s a small, select guest list. Just me and you, Gance, and your sisters, like old times.

  Have you seen your sisters lately? The last time I saw Athene was when I fucked her brains out in Amsterdam.

  I came across her table-dancing in a sushi bar on Engheitstraat, a dive underneath some damn bridge, half in and half out of the Oude Zijds Voorburgwal. There were condoms floating in the grey water; the stuff they served up in the bar looked and tasted like goddamn condoms.

  Athene was far gone that night. She didn’t even recognise me. Her head was full of weirdness. She thought I was just another punter. She went on and on about how she could cure pain and bring healing, thanks to Dr Whatsisname, who’d grafted needles underneath her cuticles directly connected with the meridians of her yin and yang. She was a walking acupuncture babe, she said. As if I didn’t know.

  Athene was very gabby that night. She told me she was a big bright green pleasure machine. Then her eyes went glassy and she told me twice how she’d once met Stephen Hawking in a bus station in West London. That’s how far gone she was.

  I took her back to the American Hotel, strapped her to the bed and fucked her stupid for a week. She still didn’t know who I was. She said I was sick, if I just untied her, she could help me with those bloody needles of hers, fuse the meridians of her yin and yang with mine. She showed me one, flicked it out from her curled forefinger like a cartoon cat mesmerizing its victim with its claws.

  But I wasn’t having any of it, not that night. I saw vengeance in her eyes, Gance. Maybe she recognised me at last and remembered that night in the Cairo brothel. I wasn’t convinced she had my wellbeing at heart.

  I wonder how she got off that bed anyway, after I’d gone?

  I’m really looking forward to seeing you again, Gance. It will be like old times. We can Frug together, do the Twist, the Madison— anything you like. And there’s so much to talk about.

  You heard how Elvis landed on the moon, right? One small step for a man, one giant leap for King Creole.

  And how about when the Mars probe found that time-machine and they used it to go back and kidnap Phil Dick? That was some stunt, eh? Was he gob-smacked to see what a cult hero he’d become?

  And you remember when Bill Gates stepped into the world’s first artificially generated Wormhole in Austin and stepped out in Lubbock? And you remember the horrible shirt he was wearing?

  Gance, you do remember recent history, don’t you? I would hate to think I was investing all this time and stuff in someone whose brains had been fried by too much prion-protein.

  Come on, climb into my web, and toast eternity with me as time tick ticks out. Let’s have one last dance together.

  Bring a bottle.

  ~ * ~

  Gance—one important thing—you’re wondering why the guy who handed you this package exploded? He had an implant of explosive gel in his left buttock and instructions to self-destruct within two minutes of handing it to you. Sorry about the mess. He was only a mule. Don’t feel bad about it. He knew what he was getting into, and, anyway, he believed in Alcephus. His dependents have been very richly rewarded.

  I’m a wealthy man now, Gance. It’s just that I choose to live this way.

  Haven’t you been following my career? Shame on you. One good idea, you know? Wasn’t that what we always said? One good idea and tomorrow can take care of itself. And I have a million good ideas now, all primed and ready to scuttle out across the universe. A million Silver Beetles hurtling down their very own Helter Skelter.

  You never believed in me, Gance. Of the three of you, you were the only one I c
ould never get to because basically you thought I was shit.

  But check out the package.

  Just pictures, third-generation Polaroids produced on vintage stock. There’s no test known to man can prove them real or otherwise. Smart eh? The sort of thing a shit might think of.

  Recognise your sisters? I know it must be hard. How many years, after all? Yeah, that’s Cleo, retrieved from the memory bank of a photo-booth in a supermarket in Canton. She’s so thin and frail, isn’t she? What can she have been doing with her life? And this one’s Athene. Someone took her photo on a digital camera as she waited to withdraw money from a bank in Sao Paulo. Just the face again, but she’s touching her cheek with her hand. Where did she get those scars, do you think? It looks as if someone beat her up.