“My uncle spent a fortune on those magazines alone! A complete set of Amazing Stories. I can remember when he got the last of it, the rare slab-sheeted numbers.”
She smiled with something resembling fondness. “Oh yes, a passing technical fancy, weren’t they?”
He stared at her. There were now linear reader portables that expanded right in your hand. A text popped out into a thin sheet, clear and self-lit. Great engineering.
She didn’t notice his silence. “But boring, I’m told. Even those worn out magazines were well past the great age of linear writing.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Alex said, recovering slowly and trying to find a wedge to undermine her composure. He drew his coverlet tight, sitting amid the revelry and swank.
Entertainment was essential these forlorn days, when all who could have already fled to warmer climes.
Even they had met with rising ocean levels, giving the stay-behinds delicious, sardonic amusement. Alex tired of the main plot thread, a sordid romance. He was distracted by his troubles. He opened the book-like reader and began scanning the moving pictures inside. The reader had only one page. The cylinder in its spine projected a 3D animated drama, detailing background and substories of some of the main movid’s characters. He popped up sidebar text on several historical details, reading for long moments while the action froze on the walls. When he turned the book’s single sheet, it automatically cycled to the next page. Alex had been following the intricately braided story-streams of Mohicans for months now. Immersion in a time and place blended the fascinations of fiction, spectacle, history, and philosophy. Facets of the tangled tale could be called up in many forms, whole subplots altered at will. Alex seldom intruded on the action, disliking the intensely interactive features. He preferred the supple flows of time, the feeling of inexorable convergence of events. The real world demanded more interaction than he liked; he certainly did not seek it in his recreation.
The old-fashioned segments were only a few paragraphs of linear text, nothing to saturate the eye. He even read a few, interested at one point in the menu which an Indian was sharing with a shapely white woman. Corn mush, singularly unappealing. The woman smacked her lips with relish, though, as she slipped her bodice down before the brave’s widening eyes. Alex watched the cooking fire play across her ample breasts, pertly perched like rich yellow-white pears in the flickering, smoky glow—and so the idea came to him.
“Alex,” the Contessa said, “they’re marvelous.”
“Absolute rarities,” he said, already catching on that the way to handle these people was to act humble and mysterious. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
The Contessa gave her blond tresses a saucy little flip. “That people were that way?”
Alex had no idea what way she meant, but he answered, “Oh, yes, nothing exceeds like excess,” with what he hoped was light wit. Too often his ironic humor seemed even to himself to become, once spoken, a kind of pig irony—but the Contessa missed even this much, turning away to greet more guests.
He regarded them with that mixture of awe and contempt which those who feel their lights are permanently obscured under bushels know all too well. For here, resplendent, came the mayor and his latest rub, a saffron-skinned woman of teenage smoothness and eyes eons old. They gyred into the ample uptown apartment as if following an unheard gavotte, pirouetting between tight knots of gushing supplicants. The mayor, a moneyed rogue, was a constant worldwide talk show maven. His grinning image played upon the artificial cloud formations that loomed over his city at sunset, accompanied by the usual soft drink advertisements. Impossibly, this glossy couple spun into Alex’s orbit. “Oh, we’ve heard!” the mayor’s rub squeezed out with breathless ardor. “You are so inventive!”
The mayor murmured something which instantly eluded Alex, who was still entranced by the airy, buoyant woman. Alex coughed, blinked, and said, “It’s nothing, really.”
“I can hardly wait,” the perfectly sculpted woman said with utterly believable enthusiasm. Alex opened his mouth to reply, ransacking his mind for some witticism—and then she was gone, whisked away on the mayor’s arm as if she had been an illusion conjured up by a street magician. Alex sighed, watching the nape of her swanlike neck disappear into the next knot of admiring drones.
“Well, nice of them to talk to you longer than that,” Louise said at his elbow. She was radiant. Her burnt-rust hair softly flexed, caressing her shoulders, cooing and whispering as the luxuriant strands slid and seethed—the newest in biotech cosmetics.
Alex hid his surprise. “It was much longer than I expected,” he said cautiously.
“Oh no, you’ve become the rage.” She tossed her radiant hair. “When I accepted the invitation to, well, come and do my little thing, I never expected to see such, such—”
“Such self-luminous beings?” Alex helped her along with the latest term for celebrities.
Louise smiled demurely in sympathy. “I knew—that’s why I strong-armed the Contessa for an invitation.”
“Ah,” Alex said reservedly. He was struggling to retain the sense that his head had not in fact left his body and gone whirling about the room, aloft on the sheer gauzy power of this place.
Through the nearest transparent wall he saw brutal cliffs of glass, perspectives dwindling down into the gray wintry streets of reality. Hail drummed at him only a foot away. Skyscraper, he thought, was the ugliest word in the language. Yet part of a city’s charm was its jagged contrasts: the homeless coughing blood outside restaurant windows where account executives licked their dessert spoons, hot chestnut vendors serving laughing couples in tuxes and gowns, winos slouched beside smoked-glass limos.
Even in this clogged, seemingly intimate party there were contrasts, though filmed by politeness. In a corner stood a woman who, by hipshot stance and slinky dress, told everyone that she was struggling to make it socially on the Upper West Side while living on the Lower East. Didn’t she know that dressing skimpily to show that you were oblivious to the chilly rooms was last year’s showy gesture? Even Alex knew that.
Alex snuggled into his thick tweed jacket, rented for the occasion. “—and I never would have thought of actually just making the obvious show of it you did,” Louise concluded a sentence that had nearly whizzed by him. He blinked.
Incredibly, Louise gazed at him with admiration. Until this instant he had been ice-skating over the moments, Alex realized. Now her pursed-mouth respect struck him solidly, with heady effect, and he knew that her lofty professionalism was not all he had longed for. Around him buzzed the endless churn of people whose bread and butter were their cleverness, their nerves, their ineffable sense of fleeting style. He cared nothing for them. Louise—her satiny movements, her acerbic good sense—that, he wanted. And not least, her compact, silky curves, so deftly implying voluptuous secrets.
The Contessa materialized like one of the new fog-entertainments, her whispery voice in his ear. “Don’t you think it’s…time?”
Alex had been lost in lust. “Oh. Oh, yes.”
She led. The crowd flowed, parting for them like the Red Sea. The Contessa made the usual announcements, set rules for the silent auction, then gave a florid introduction. Sweating slightly despite the room’s fashionable level of chill, Alex opened his briefcase and brought out the first.
“I give you Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1940, featuring ‘The Voyage to Nowhere.’ Well, I suppose by now we’ve arrived.”
Their laughter was edgy with anticipation. Their pencils scribbled on auction cards. “Next, Startling Stories, with its promise, ‘A Novel of the Future Complete in This Issue.’ And if you weren’t startled, come back next issue.”
That got another stylish laugh from them. As more lurid titles piled up, he warmed to his topic. “And now, novels. Odd John, about a super-genius, showing that even in those days it was odd to be intelligent. Both British and American first editions here, all quite authentic.”
He could tell he had them. L
ouise watched him approvingly. He ran through his little jokes about the next dozen novels. Utopian schemes, techno-dreams.
Butlers circulated, collecting bids on the demure pastel cards. The Contessa gave him a pleased smile, making an 0 with her thumb and forefinger to signal success. Good. The trick lay in extracting bids without slowing the entertainment. He kept up his line of patter.
“I’m so happy to see such grand generosity,” Alex said, moving smoothly on. “Remember, your contributions will establish the first fully paperless library for the regrettable poor. And now—”
Dramatic pause. They rustled with anticipation. A touch more of tantalizing to sharpen matters, Alex judged: more gaudy magazines. A fine copy of Air Wonder Stories, April 1930, showing a flying saucer like a buzz saw cutting through an airplane. Finally, a deliciously lurid Amazing Stories depicting New York’s massive skyline toppling beneath an onslaught of glaciers. Laughter.
“We won’t have that, will we?” Alex asked.
“Nooooo!” the crowd answered, grinning.
“Then let the past protect us!” he cried, and with a pocket lighter bent down to the stack he had made in the apartment’s fireplace. The magazines went off first—whoosh!—erupting into billowing orange-yellow flame.
Burning firewood had of course been outlawed a decade ago. Even disposing of old furniture was a crime. They’d tax the carbon dioxide you exhaled if they could.
But no one had thought of this naughtiness. The crisp old pulps, century-dried, kindled the thick novels. Their hardcover dust wrappers blackened and then the boards crackled. Volumes popped open as the glue in their spines ignited. Lines of type stood starkly on the open pages as the fierce radiance illuminated them, engulfed them, banished them forever from a future they had not foretold. The chilly room rustled as rosy heat struck the crowd’s intent faces.
Alex stepped away from the growing pyre. This moment always came. He had been doing this little stunt only a few weeks, but already its odd power had hummed up and down the taut stretched cables of the city’s social stresses. What first began as a minor amusement had quickened into fevered fashion. Instant fame, all doors opening to him—all for the price of a pile of worthless paper.
Their narrowed faces met the dancing flames with rapt eyes, gazes turned curiously inward. He had seen this transformation at dozens of parties, yet only now began to get a glimmer of what it meant to them. The immediate warmth quickened in them a sense of forbidden indulgence, a reminder of lush eras known to their forefathers. Yet it also banished that time, rejecting its easy optimism and unconscious swank. Yes, there it emerged—the cold-eyed gaze that came over them, just after the first rush of blazing heat. The Amazing Stories caught and burst open with sharp snaps and pops. On its lurid cover New York’s glaciers curled down onto Manhattan’s towers—and then into black smoke.
Revenge. That was what they felt. Revenge on an era that had unthinkingly betrayed them. Retribution upon a time that these same people unconsciously sought to emulate, yet could not, and so despised. The Age of Indulgence Past.
“Let’s slip away,” Louise whispered. Alex saw that the mayor and his newest rub were entranced. None of these people needed him any longer. His treason was consummated, Uncle Herb betrayed yet again.
They edged aside, the fire’s gathering roar covering their exit. Louise snuggled against him, a promise of rewards to come. Her frosty professionalism had melted as the room warmed, the radiance somehow acting even on her, a collector.
As Alex crossed the thick carpet toward the door, he saw that this was no mere freakish party trick. The crowd basked in the glow, their shoulders squaring, postures straightening. He had given these people permission to cast off the past’s dead hand. The sin of adding carbon dioxide to the burdened air only provided the spice of excitement.
Unwittingly, Alex had given them release. Perhaps even hope. With Louise he hurried into the cold, strangely welcoming night.
World Vast, World Various
(1992)
1.
The Cusp Moment
The vortex wind roiled stronger, howled across the jagged peaks to the south, and provoked strange wails as it rushed toward the small band of humans.
The sounds came to Miyuki like a chorus of shrill, dry voices. Three hundred kilometers to the south these winds were born, churned up by the tidal surges of the brother planet overhead. Across vacant plains they came singing, over rock sculpted into sleek submission by the raw winds. Gusts tore at the twenty-three Japanese in their air masks and thick jackets. A dusty swirl bedeviled them with its grit, then raced on.
“They’re coming,” Tatsuhiko said tensely.
Miyuki squinted into the cutting cold. She could barely see dots wavering amid the billows of dust. In her rising excitement she checked again her autocam, belt holdings, even her air hoses. Nothing must go wrong, nothing should steal one moment from this fresh contact between races. The events of the next hour would be studied by future generations, hallowed and portentous. As a geophysicist her own role was minor. Their drills had taught her to keep Tatsuhiko and the other culture specialists in good view of her autocam, without being herself conspicuous. Or so they hoped. What if beings born of this austere place found smell, not sight, conspicuous?
“They’re spreading out,” Tatsuhiko said, standing stick-straight. “A sign of hostility? Maneuver?”
Opinions flowed over their suit comm. Tatsuhiko brushed aside most of them. Though she could not see his face well, she knew well the lean contours of concern that would crease his otherwise smooth, yellowish complexion. Miyuki kept silent, as did all those not versed in the consummate guesswork that its practitioners called Exo-Analysis.
The contact team decided that the Chujoans might have separated in their perpetual quest for small game. This theory seemed to gain confirmation as out of the billowing dust came a peri and two burrowbunnys, scampering before the advancing line. The nomads doggedly pursued, driving game before them, snaring some they took by surprise.
I hope they don’t mind an interrupted hunt, Miyuki thought. They seemed stolid, as if resigned to the unrelenting hardship of this cruelly thin world. Then she caught herself: Don’t assume. That was the first rule here.
She had seen the videos, the scans from orbit, the analytical studies of their movements—and still the aliens startled her.
Their humanoid features struck her first: thin-shanked legs; calves muscled and quick; deep chests broad with fat; arms that tapered to four-fingered hands. But the rest…
Scalloped ears perched nearly atop the large, oval head. Eyes were consumed by their pupils. A slitted mouth like a shark’s, the rictus grin of an uncaring carnivore. Yet she knew they were omnivores—had to be, to survive in this bleak biosphere. The hands looked wrong—blue fingernails, ribbed calluses, and the first and last fingers both were double-jointed thumbs.
These features she took in as the aliens strode forward in their odd, graceful way. Three hundred and twenty-seven of them, one of the largest bands yet seen. The wind brought their talk to her from half a kilometer away. Trills, twitterings, lacings of growls. Were they warning each other?
“Showing signs of regrouping,” Tatsuhiko called edgily.
As leader of the contact team he had to anticipate trouble of any sort. The aliens were turning to bring the vector of their march directly into the center of the humans. Miyuki edged into a low gully, following the team’s directives. Swiftly the Japanese formed a triangular pattern, Tatsuhiko at the point. To him went the honor of the cusp moment.
The pale morning light outlined the rumpled peaks to the west, turning the lacy brushwork of high fretted clouds into a rosy curtain, and their light cast shadows into the faces of the approaching aliens.
Miyuki was visible only to a few of the tall, swaying shapes as they made their wary way. She thought at first that they were being cautious, perhaps were fearful, but then she remembered the videos of similar bands. They perpetually strode w
ith an open gait, ready to bound after game if it should appear, eyes roving in a slow search pattern. These were no different.
With gravity fifteen percent less than Earth’s, these creatures had a graceful, liquid stride on their two curiously hooflike feet. They held lances and clubs and slingshots casually, seemingly certain that whatever these waiting strangers might be, weaponry could keep them at bay. They were only a few hundred meters away now and she felt her breathing tighten.
Chujo’s thin, chilly air plucked at her. She wondered if it affected her eyes, because now she could see the aliens’ clothing—and it was moving.
They wore a kind of living skin which adjusted to each change in the cant of their arms, each step. The moving brown stuff tucked closely at neck and armpits and groin, where heat loss would be great, yet left free the long arms and muscled thighs. Could such primitives master biotech capable of this? Or had they domesticated some carpet-like animal?
No time left for speculations. Her comm murmured with apprehension as the nearest alien stolidly advanced to within a hundred meters.
“Remember Kammer,” one of the crew observed laconically.
“Remember your duty!” Tatsuhiko countered sharply.
Miyaki’s vision sharpened to an unnatural edge. She had a rising intuition of something strange, something none of them had—
“Tatsuhiko,” she called. “Do not step in front of them.”
“What?” Tatsuhiko answered sharply as the leading alien bore down upon him. “Who said that? I—”
And the moment had arrived.
Tatsuhiko stood frozen.
The face of the truly alien. Crusty-skinned. Hairless. Scaly slabs of flesh showing age and wear. The alien turned its head as it made its long, loping way by Tatsuhiko. Its skin was fretted, suggesting feathers, with veins beneath the rough hide making a lacework of pink, as in the feet of some earthly birds. And the eyes—swollen pupils giving the impression of intense concentration, swiveling across the landscape in smooth unconcern.
The Best of Gregory Benford Page 28