Somewhere else tonight, another death-row inmate unwittingly awaits judgment for his crimes. He sits alone in his cell, playing solitaire or watching a sitcom on a TV on the other side of the bars, and perhaps smiles at the notion that, this time tomorrow, he will be taken out of the prison to some college campus to make a speech to a bunch of kids, unaware that what awaits him are the eyes and hands of Charles Gregory Doblin.
It's a role which Charlie Doblin once savored, then found morally repugnant, and finally accepted as predestination. He has no say over what he does; this is his fate, and indeed it could be said that this is his true calling. He is very good at what he does, and his services are always in demand.
He has become a teacher.
Charles Gregory Doblin scoots back his chair, stands up and turns around, and lets the state troopers attach manacles to his wrists and ankles. Then he lets them take him to the van, and his next lesson.
The Bride of Elvis
KATHLEEN ANN GOONAN
Kathleen Ann Goonan's first SF novel, Queen City Jazz, was published in 1995 bearing endorsements from William Gibson and Lucius Shepard, and was a widely praised New York Times Notable Book. Her second novel, The Bones of Time, appeared in 1996, also to widespread acclaim, and late in 1997 the sequel to her first novel, Mississippi Blues, will appear. She is one of the bright new stars of the mid-1990s. And for the last several years she has been publishing short fiction of high quality in Interzone, Asimov's, and Omni. She has a droll wit and a complicated approach to storytelling that usually includes loads of SF details, shows a fascination with history and popular culture, and has lots of things happening. “The Bride of Elvis” first appeared in SF Age. This story is another tonic in the face of films of alien invasion and the anti-science of television shows such as The X-Files. Elvis, you see, was more than just King of rock and roll.…
Finding the tomb of Elvis empty was a big shock for Darlene.
She usually rose just before dawn, the nicest time of day here at Graceland, when it was all misty and as pretty as the Day of Instantaneous Redemption was going to be.
But this particular Sunday, the hot sun coming in the nine-foot-high window hit Darlene square in the face as she lay dreaming of mana, white and lovely. She stirred, blinked, and then slipped back into the dream, where she was a child again, eating as much mana as she could stuff down, while the others laughed at her greed and urged her on.
She rolled over and luxuriated atop the warmth of her round, leather-rimmed waterbed, resting her ear against the black satin sheet to hear the soothing slosh within.
Then she opened her eyes.
The readout on her alarm was blinking. Power must have gone out. Either that or she had messed it up again. Shoot. It was probably after eight, and Lu Ellen would have gone off-shift at seven.
So?
It was Sunday. Darlene went limp again. A slow day. Graceland wouldn't open until 9:30. She had plenty of time to check Elvis' readouts, and she had given Ella Mae in the Gift Shop a stockpile of hair snippings and skin scrapings, all ready in their little plastic twist-boxes (Ella Mae couldn't accuse her of being lazy this time and leaving all the work for someone else), so she wouldn't have to fool with that this morning.
But after five more minutes of sloth, she heaved herself out of bed, put on her plastic cap and showered, then sat down at her white French Provincial dressing table.
She pulled big rollers out of her long, honey-colored hair and put on foundation, cool and smooth against her skin, powder, and red lipstick. She touched on the compsphere, and the Hearings began to play.
The King, the King
Will rise again
Through air of gold and fire.
Her favorite. She hummed along with the ethereal voices of the Elvis Choir, then it got into the Prophecies, about the ship coming back with plenteous mana for all.
As Darlene listened, she put on her eye makeup, which she especially loved. Mermaid Green eyeshadow, with little sparkles in it, right after the black eyeliner. She shopped at the Rex-Mart down on Magnolia. That was the only place she could find Mermaid Green.
Fake eyelashes and lots of thick, black mascara. There. When the daily Prophecy was over, she turned on the radio and looked in the closet.
“Love me tender, love me true, never let me go,” The King sang via KYNG, right across the river.
You bet, honey. Oh, you bet.
As she buttoned her lace blouse, a public service message urged the latest solution to help everyone stay prepared for the Great Return in case it took much longer, head-freezing. For the ones who didn't want to put up with any more bull while they waited. Elizabeth Taylor was going to do it, apparently, and some other humans, like Timothy Leary and Michael Jackson.
Darlene laughed out loud when she heard that, but it was really kind of sad. There was always that seepage between them and humans, but head-freezing wouldn't work for humans, of course. Tiny, but crucial, things about their physiology were entirely different; they couldn't regenerate. Not to mention that their technology was so primitive.
She gave her curls a final, swift brush and fastened back one side of her hair with a rhinestone barrette that spelled out ELVIS.
She felt a bit haughty as she left her room in the Bride's Hall. If you didn't have the Lineage, you had nothing. And she had it. In spades. It was one reason she was a Bride.
In the kitchen, which was empty, she fixed herself some instant coffee, all she liked in the morning unless she was a tad hungry, and then she had ten or eleven microwave sausage biscuits. The four other Brides were still asleep, of course, but there were usually some snotty Techs running around in their slick gray suits and belts jammed with all kinds of what-not and gadgets. They though they were so great. They didn't realize that without the Brides, the race just couldn't continue. Rita in particular was a jerk. She always got on Darlene's nerves, stepping aside and bowing when she went by, saying, “Make way, everyone, wow, it's a Bride.”
Darlene lit her first Marlboro of the day and opened the cooler door to get a fresh sheaf of gladiola to put in the vases around Elvis' pedestal. The thick, dark green stalks were cool in her hand. She slipped her feet into the white satin heels she'd carried with her, opened the back door, and walked down the path to the Tomb.
The small pavilion that held Elvis was in the Meditation Garden. She reflected, as usual, as she passed the perfectly manicured trees that lined the path, on how fortunate she was to be a Bride. That, along with the Hearings, always got her in the proper frame of mind for putting up with all the fat, sweating mutants (and some thin, pretty ones too, now, Darlene, don't be evil) for the next eight hours.
It was always comforting to see Him there, all ready for the coming Redemption. He'd been put in a plexi-glass pyramid showcase years ago, once they realized that the Redemption might take longer than they thought. That was the best way, the Committee had decided, to keep control of everything. A bunch of rabble-rousers who called themselves the Band of the King were always demanding more access, but they were just ineffective young upstarts for the most part, jealous because the Lineage of many of the members was human-tinged, though they weren't full-blown mutants. Ugly folks, ugly in the way they acted. Darlene shivered.
Calmed by the spring flowers that flanked the pavilion, Darlene saw that the sky was becoming overcast. The sun was hidden now, and the air smelled like rain. She climbed the five low marble steps up to the stone door, which was inscribed with angels and guitars. She raised her wrist to scan the door open, stopped. Her arm hung in the air.
The door was already open, just an inch. Her breath stuck in her throat: she stood on the threshold as fear flooded through her. The lights weren't working; she fumbled around on the wall next to the door and got the backup panel open, found the light button and flicked it with her long fingernail.
The plexiglass lid was propped open. Someone, someone with access…Darlene began to shake. The fat old guy just wasn't there. Lead wires dangled ov
er the guitar-embossed pedestal.
Her cigarette fell from her fingers and smoldered on the pink shag rug. Maybe, she told Koell later, when she had to explain, she felt that it was her fault and that all their plans and dreams were ruined, blasted by the indigenous idiots on this backward planet they had to live on. Mingled in the back of her mind were the threats of the Band of the King. They kept saying they had to take matters into their own hands if anyone ever wanted to see the ship again—that is, they said, if such a ship even existed. Some of them, backsliders, were idiots enough to doubt.
Struck by waves of anxiety, she didn't stop to think that security was the Tech's job, or about anything, except that the other Brides would have her head as soon as they saw this, and if they froze it, they'd do it in a way so that she couldn't regenerate.
All her fear soul rose up through her throat, white-hot, as pure as a Gospel wail. “He's gone. He's gone”!
She ran right out through the Music Gate, using her wrist scanner to open it without thinking twice. Didn't care who was looking. Panicked. She ran right out onto Elvis Presley Boulevard, screaming her fool head off.
And met Roy.
He pulled up in front of her at the stoplight in a battered white F-100 Ford pickup with double back wheels and a custom extra-long bed. She was breathing hard and letting out a little sob at the end of each breath and knew, in the back of her mind, that she was quite a sight in her silver miniskirt, lacy blouse, and white satin heels, still holding the glads in her left hand.
She stared right through the window at the kind-faced man, who was handsome too, let's not mince words here, with keen blue eyes, black hair, and a short, black beard. His wide shoulders were hunched over the wheel, and his long lanky arms stopped while reaching up for the column shift as he stared right back at her. He leaned over and opened the door. “Get in, little lady, get right on in here.”
Darlene didn't think twice. She got right in there and started bawling hard. He reached across her and then had to slide right next to her to reach the door and close it since she was holding on tight to that bouquet with both hands now, worried about Mars, her talking cat, not having had any breakfast at all, not any, then remembering that the bag of pellets was open behind the kitchen door.
The light changed, and he ground the gears, apparently not concerned about his transmission, and whatever he had in the back of the truck crashed against the tailgate.
“Jason took my tie-down, the little creep. Wait till I get my hands on him, I'll warm his fanny good. His mom lets him do whatever he wants. I'm just the mean daddy.” He sighed, and his eyes, when he looked at Darlene, were sad and lost. “He stays mostly with her anyway.”
Darlene was still crying some, just little snorts and a few tears. He leaned down and fished under the seat and came up with an old wrecked box of Kleenex. He pulled one out and handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “Blow hard.”
She put the flowers up on the dash and blew hard, not feeling at all embarrassed.
“Now, I want you to tell me what this here is all about,” he said. “Have a fight with your boyfriend?”
“No,” she gasped, so upset that she didn't even think twice about what to say. “It's Elvis. He's gone!” And she started to cry again, even harder. They'd waited for so long, and now that He was gone, no one would ever return, and they would never get home again. The ship wouldn't have any reason to come back for them. Stuck on this Kingforsaken planet through all millennia. And no more kiddies either! They couldn't have kiddies without Him! Those little twist-boxes of hair clippings would be used up real fast. She started to cry again. It was too awful. Darlene had never felt so rattled in all her born days, not even when she had had to leave her kiddies behind to take up her duties as a Bride.
“Oh,” he said. “I see.” But she could tell by the set of his jaw and the crinkle beneath his eye that he didn't see, not at all, and she was enraged that she'd told all this to a stranger, a human, who would only laugh at her.
But he didn't. He just drove through the empty downtown Memphis blocks, past the Peabody, through the ramshackle part of town with its run-down blues dives, until they got to the river.
“Maybe it would calm you down some to go for a little ride. Sometimes that's the best thing to do, it's real soothing, you know, especially after we get out into the country. I live over in Arkansas. It's right pretty over there, and the apple blossoms are all out. Well, you might not want to go anywhere with me—” he looked at her and she stared back—“I might as well tell you I got real drunk last night and pretty much passed out here in the front seat. But there's no reason to hold that against me. Sometimes a person has to have a drink or two.”
She didn't say anything while they crossed the gray Mississippi beneath the darkening sky, thinking furiously. What the hell was going on? Why was He gone? Why hadn't the security system worked? Because of the power failure, probably, the one that put her alarm clock on the blink. That Tech Rita, strutting around in her militaristic gear. She'd like it if Darlene was blamed, wouldn't she? Wouldn't be too hard to keep her from waking up on time. Maybe she was in cahoots with the Band of the King.
Yeah, sure. But what about the backup system?
She'd almost forgotten where she was when he said, “Well, really, I could use some breakfast, couldn't you? You sure look like you could.”
He pulled into a little place that advertised “Home Cooking” and helped her jump down from the seat. The truck cab was pretty high off the ground, not like her low, sleek, red 'Vette with the plate that read Bride 1.
She followed him inside, drained and tired. Well, of course she was ravenous. It was their one weakness—they needed to eat, and a lot; they needed these substances produced by Earth to survive. Not as good as mana, not nearly as powerful or longevity-producing, but they could get by if they got enough. That's why they hit the grocery stores so often. Two, three times a day, full carts each time. Too many of them to feed on the ship after the drive went bad, not enough energy to run the ship and make mana too. A skeleton crew had gone on. They'd be back. Someday. Or maybe never, now, because of her. Because of her failure.
They had discovered that they couldn't all live together here, though—they simply ate too much. At least four times as much as humans, so they spread out over a couple of states so as not to attract notice.
They kept in touch at the grocery stores, of course. Those aisles were their domain, the sound of rattling grocery carts as familiar as breathing, the memorized foodgrids of a dozen big grocery chains each one knew like the back of her hand. A lot of them doubted whether the fleet would come back for them, but Darlene had never wavered in her faith. Until today.
She'd never trusted the Techs, with all their fancy gear and snotty ways. She once even requested a few pit bulls to stand guard. That point in her favor was on the record. A pretty slim defense, now that the worst had happened. “You have no idea,” she had told the Committee, her days full of sobbing women flinging themselves against the velvet rope, smearing lipstick on the pyramid. But they weren't the real problem. Earth was such an odd place, full of criminals and just pure weirdness, you never knew what might happen, and now the worst, the absolute worst had happened. There were plenty of people who'd like to get hold of Elvis. But without Techs, he wouldn't last long.
She slid into the booth still trying to figure things out. She stared out the window while the black-haired man ordered coffee and hash browns and ham and biscuits and gravy and cheese omelets and grits for both of them just as if he knew, although she could see at a glance that he couldn't and that he was just a normal old human. But a good one, she saw that too. She wouldn't have even gotten into his truck if she hadn't been able to see that, but she didn't even have to think about those sorts of things because humans were really such simple beings. She kind of liked them, they made things so homey. They knew how to live—except that they scarcely lived longer than an insect. Hardly a tragedy, as far as she was concerned.
/> Still, sometimes she got tired of being a Bride and wanted to just be a human, instead of taking care of Elvis and longing for her kiddies. She'd had two before she was eleven, the process triggered by the sweat on the scarf she'd grabbed at her first concert.
Elvis had thrown it right at her. God, how lucky she'd been! Chosen! If the ship ever did come back, she was first in line for Elvis. She'd been activated at just the right age; she was one of the few who could actually mate with Elvis and conceive another King.
But it wasn't all fun. She'd had to leave those cute kiddies with her mother in order to be a Bride. That was hard. Being a Bride wasn't all it was cut out to be—checking all those meters and charts every day, letting them know if something was just a hair off so's the Techs could rush over and make a big deal out of it and blame it on the Bride in charge. Techs didn't think much of Brides, that was for sure. And now He was gone, and it was all her fault!
Or if it wasn't, best to hide out till they figured out whose fault it really was. She shivered to think how mean the other Brides would be when they found the King gone. It was pretty much like murder, or maybe killing somebody with a runaway car, because they wouldn't live much longer without him. Maybe not even a full human lifespan, puny as that was. Shit.
The man was watching her. He smiled. “You know, I'm not making fun of you or anything, but you sure look silly with all that stuff running down your face. Whenever we cried, Ma used to make us look in the mirror and see how funny we looked. ‘See that monkey?’ she'd say, and by God if that wouldn't make you laugh out loud to see your own red little face all screwed up—”
Shut up, she felt like saying, What do you know? but instead slid out of the seat.
“Wait,” he said, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean—”
She let the door of the ladies' room whoosh shut behind her and leaned with straight elbows on the white, scummy sink.
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